Cold Case
by alcimines
Summary: Harry Dresden is hired to investigate a long-forgotten case. Back in 1970, a vampire left a trail of bodies in Las Vegas. During the investigation, Harry discovers that an old-school reporter named Carl Kolchak was involved in that case.
1. Chapter 1

COLD CASE - Chapter 1

"I don't normally do out-of-town jobs," I said warily. Which was true. Chicago is my home. I know it better than anywhere else in the world. When I take a case elsewhere, I'm not at my best.

The woman sitting across from me was past middle-aged, but you could tell that once upon a time she'd been a head-turning looker. From the way she talked, she struck me as intelligent, but not terribly well-educated. She was well-dressed, but something about that seemed off. I had the impression that for most of her life she'd been accustomed to clothes that were considerably less expensive than what she now wearing.

"I want you for this case, Mr. Dresden," my prospective client said firmly.

"Mrs. Winfield," I said, "a cold case investigation takes a lot of time because you pretty much have to reinvestigate everything. That's expensive. And that kind of investigation usually doesn't turn up anything new. I'm trying to give you a fair warning. You might end up spending a lot of money and get nothing much in return."

"I have money, Mr. Dresden. What I don't have is answers - or time. I have a local private investigator working on the case. He's competent, but it's become obvious to me that he simply can't deal with the stranger aspects of the case."

"And you think I can?" I asked.

My prospective client smiled tightly. "A friend here in Chicago once hired you. She told me that you see what others refuse to see. She says you worked a miracle for her."

She paused.

"And I need a miracle," she added as an edge of desperation crept into her voice. "My sister died a long time ago, but the story of how she died never made a lot of sense. My parents died not knowing the truth, but pretty sure that important people were lying to us. I want you to find the truth, Mr. Dresden. I want to know what happened to Mary."

The next day, I dropped Mister and Mouse off with Murphy. Then I boarded a train heading to Las Vegas.

* * *

A guy met me at the Las Vegas train station. Mrs. Winfield had set that up.

"You must be Dresden." The man talking to me was maybe in his fifties and built like a fireplug - short, thick, and solid-looking. He was wearing a less-than-expensive suit and his iron-gray hair was cut short. Nothing about his face stood out except for a pair of brown eyes that were sharp and didn't look like they missed much. At the moment they were checking out my black duster, staff, and the glove on my left hand. He looked less than impressed.

Everything about him radiated ex-cop.

"That's me," I said.

He didn't offer to shake my hand. "My name's Flint," he said stiffly. "Mrs. Winfield wants us to talk. I did some work on the Skorzeny case for her."

That was the reason for the attitude. Mrs. Winfield told me she didn't have a problem with the work Flint had done for her. She just needed someone with a different perspective - a really different perspective - to take over the case. But Flint didn't understand that and was obviously offended at the suggestion that he hadn't done his job.

And now he had to clue-in his replacement.

"Flint," I said with a nod of my head as I awkwardly shifted the big sports bag I was carrying on my back. The hand not holding my staff was carrying a small cylindrical case of the kind you might use to carry an expensive hat.

"I've got the case file in my car. Mrs. Winfield said I should transfer it to you."

"Great. You got some time to talk about the case before I call a cab?"

Flint hesitated. Then he nodded his head.

* * *

There was a bar just down the street. In addition to the usual stuff, they had a decent range of small-brewery beers. I ordered a local stout that turned out to be pretty good. Flint had a scotch on the rocks.

An over-full filebox was on the table. It was Flint's files for his investigation into the Skorzeny case.

"Mrs. Winfield said you wanted a paper printout," Flint said. "Here it is."

"Yeah, thanks. Hey, Flint, I want you to know that the boss told me she thought you did good work. She hired me because I'm specialist."

"Quite the specialist," Flint said shortly. "I looked you up."

Then he paused and gave me a long, hard, look. "It's none of my business how a man market's his services. And Mrs. Winfield is a pretty sharp lady who can take care of herself. And it turns out that you actually have a decent rep in Chicago. But just remember this, Dresden, I have the phone number for the bunco squad on speed dial."

Ah. Flint had seen the word "Wizard" listed as my profession and immediately decided that I was a phony. That's not an unusual reaction. Not only was his professional pride stung, but now he was worried that I was working a con on Mrs. Winfield. That was a reasonable reaction on his part, but that didn't mean I had to like it.

"I charge a thousand up front and seventy-five a day, plus expenses," I replied very flatly. "That's a pretty normal rate in Chicago. When this is over, you can check with Mrs. Winfield and ask what I charged her. And if you think something's wrong with my bill, go ahead and call the cops."

"I'll do that," Flint said without hesitation, but something in him seemed to relax.

I tapped the top of the file box with my gloved hand. "Want to give me the executive summary?"

This time, Flint did hesitate. But then his sense of professionalism overcame his resentment.

"Mrs. Winfield is right. Something stinks about this case. As near as I can tell, Skorzeny was a serious nutjob who liked to play vampire. I'm talking a fangs-in-the-neck sort of vampire. Back when he was killing people here in Las Vegas, somebody decided to keep that part of the story quiet - probably because they figured that would be bad for business."

Then a look of frustration crept over Flint's face.

"Whoever did the coverup did a pretty good job. They even made most of the official records and news media reports vanish. Since the case happened over forty years ago, everyone involved is either elderly, deceased, or no longer in town. The old folks don't remember much, or they told me stories that were just plain crazy."

"What kind of crazy stories?" I asked idly as I pulled a folder out of the file box and flipped it open. Then I took my glove off so I could better handle the paperwork. Flint hastily looked away from the sight of my badly cooked left hand. Yeah, that was petty payback on my part for Flint's suspicions, but I didn't have any particular regrets.

Flint shook his head. "You'd be suprised how many people actually buy into the idea that Skorzeny was a real, honest-to-God, vampire. I think that might explain why the bodies of his victims were burned without the permission of the families. Somebody decided to not take any chances."

"Really?" I asked, trying hard to keep any sarcasm out of my voice.

"Really. And after all this time witnesses are still scared to talk about it. You have to get them where nobody can hear and then press kind of hard before they'll say what they think."

"Got any idea who's behind the cover-up?"

"The Mob was big in those days, Dresden. I figure they put pressure on the state and city government to keep the weirder parts of the Skorzeny case quiet. On top of that, some people apparently bought into Skorzeny's Count Dracula bullshit and over-reacted. Once it was all over, some important and supposedly respectable folks found themselves in an awkward position. They'd both kissed the Mob's ass and taken seriously - at least for a while - the idea that Skorzeny was a real vampire. Of course they wanted it all buried and forgotten."

"Any idea who those 'important and supposedly respectable folks' might be?"

"I don't know for sure, but three guys stand out. The County Sheriff at the time, a man from the DA's office, and a police captain. They were the people running the manhunt for Skorzeny."

"Were you able to talk to any of them?"

Flint smiled coldly at me. "Here's where a strange case gets even stranger, Dresden. All three of those men were gone within a few years after the Skorzeny case. Two dead. One missing and never seen again."

I thought that over for a few seconds before asking another question. "Any suggestions where to start on the case?"

Flint fought down the urge to tell me to figure it out for myself and my respect for him went up a notch. "I didn't get around to interviewing a lot of the surviving key witnesses before Mrs. Winfield called me off. You might want to check on the fellow who was the County Coroner at the time. And there was the lady that Skorzeny held prisoner for a while. She's still around. You'll find all of the pertinent information in a file labeled 'Leads'."


	2. Chapter 2

COLD CASE - Chapter 2

Flint dropped me off at my hotel, which I thought was pretty reasonable given his suspicians of me. The hotel wasn't very expensive, but the rooms were clean. I think the sight of the place might have done a lot to convince Flint that I was on the up-and-up. A crook who's conned someone into giving him an expense account tends to live large.

I spent the rest of the day getting settled into my room and looking through Flint's case-notes.

By that evening, the filebox was stacked on top of the dresser and papers were scattered all over my bed in semi-neat piles. My travel bag - filled with spare clothes and assorted magical bric-a-brac - was carelessly tossed into a corner. My staff was lying on the room's other bed. I'd taken Bob out of his travel case and he was sitting on top of the TV set.

"Come on Harry! We're in Vegas!" Bob complained. "Let's see a show! Something with two dozen hot girls wearing nothing but rhinestones and feathers!"

"Keep your ethereal libido under control. We're here on a job," I reminded him as I flipped through a file folder.

"Fine. And we can start first thing tomorrow. Now, I've heard a lot about the gentlemen's clubs here in Vegas..."

I shook my head. "Forget it, Bob. I still remember that time you made a home for yourself in that strip-club back in Chicago. I just about had to use dynamite to get you out of there."

That had happened a lot earlier in my career. I hadn't figured out the ins and outs of handling Bob. I gave him a carelessly open-ended command and he spent a week running amok through the flesh-pots of Chicago.

Not having any facial features, Bob couldn't pout, but he could do a passable job of making his voice sound suitably martyred. "I thought you said this case was open and shut?"

I shook my head again. "No. I said it looked open and shut. Based on what I've got so far, it looks like one of the blood-sucking varieties of vampire came to town back in 1970. The cops didn't know what they were dealing with and couldn't stop it. Eventually, they either wised up or somebody less skeptical killed the vampire. The local authorities buried the truth because it was bad for business. That left the families of the dead people out in the cold, wondering what had happened and without any answers that made sense."

"And one of the vampire's victims was your client's sister," Bob added.

"Yep. And a year ago my client came into an inheritance. A big one."

"So now she can afford to hire someone to get her some answers," Bob said.

I pointed a thumb at the filebox. "Actually, I'm her second try. She had a local Las Vegas private eye working the case. He put together a lot of information, but..."

"But he was a plain-vanilla type who didn't really know what he was looking at," Bob finished.

I nodded.

"So what kind of vampire are we talking about?" Bob asked.

"Here's what an FBI agent named Bernie Jenks had to say about the killer," I said as I picked up a sheet of paper.

"His name was Janos Skorzeny. He was born in 1899 in Priesti, Romania. His father passed away in 1923 and Skorzeny inherited a lot of money. Skorzeny then became a fan of European nightlife - a playboy of his time - until World War II. Then he showed up in England under the assumed name of Dr. Paul Belasco. He was supposedly doing medical research on blood, and somehow talked the authorities into letting him have access to freshly dead victims of German bombing raids. Eventually, Scotland Yard got suspicious and Skorzeny had to skip town. In 1948 he turned up in Canada, still under the name Belasco. Wherever he lived in Canada, people died or went missing on the American side of the border. In April of 1970 he assumed the identity of a retired police officer and moved to Las Vegas."

"I take it that his time in Vegas wasn't terribly pleasant?" Bob asked.

"Skorzeny went on a two-week killing spree. He drained four women and kidnapped at least one more. He also stole blood from two local hospitals. That included one major brawl with hospital security where he exhibited massive strength and endurance. A hospital orderly was killed in that fight. At one point the cops cornered him and that turned into another fight - a fight where two cops died. Afterwards, the surviving cops swore up and down that they shot Skorzeny multiple times, with everything from handguns to shotguns, but he still got away. Eventually, the Las Vegas police tracked Skorzeny down and quote 'killed him in a gun-battle' unquote. Skorzeny and everyone he killed was cremated. In the case of the victims, they were cremated without the permission of their families thanks to a so-called 'clerical error' in the Coroner's office. That caused a stink and the authorities ended up having to pay off the families."

Bob was silent for a few moments after I finished.

"How did the Las Vegas cops react when Jenks told them that their serial killer was well into his seventies?" Bob finally asked.

"The Las Vegas police department accepted it without much comment - or enthusiasm - as near as I can tell. Jenks supposedly got his information from sources in Scotland Yard and Interpol. Nobody in the FBI seems to have any details about who Jenks talked to. Oh... and here's a funny thing... the biography of Skorzeny that I read you was widely reported in the Vegas papers at the time, but all of the local FBI office's paperwork on the case is missing. So are most of the records for the police and the Sheriff's department."

"Cover-up?" Bob asked thoughtfully. "It sure sounds like somebody local figured out what was happening. That's why all those bodies were burned."

"Looks like it," I said with a shrug.

"Does Vegas have something like Murphy's outfit? Cops who actually have a clue?"

"Murphy hasn't heard anything, but I think we should check that out. Carefully."

"It's been forty years. How many people are still around who were involved in the case?"

"There are a few. Jenks is retired, but he lives in Kansas. The coroner - a Dr. Robert Makurji - is also retired and he lives in the area. The victim who was kidnapped by Skorzeny is still in Las Vegas. She was freed by the police when they killed Skorzeny. Otherwise, there's a scatter of cops, reporters, medical personnel, and innocent bystanders who were around at the time."

I hesitated a moment before going on. "The politicians of the time are pretty much all dead and gone, but here's something interesting. There were three guys who were in charge of the case while it was happening. Warren Butcher, who was the county sheriff at the time. Thomas Paine from the district attorney's office. And Captain Edward Masterson of the Las Vegas police. If you look at the newspapers articles from the time, their names are all over the place. After the Skorzeny case, they all came to bad ends."

"What kind of bad ends?" Bob asked interestedly.

"Butcher just vanished in 1971, never to be seen again. Captain Masterson was killed in a home invasion in 1972. They never caught the killer. Paine was caught up in an FBI sweep of the Las Vegas mob in the mid '70s. It turned out he was dirty and he went to jail in 1975. He didn't last a week before he was murdered by another prisoner."

"Wow."

"Wow," I echoed.

"Okay, you're right, Harry. This story reeks of vampire - particularly Black Court vampire - but parts of it don't make sense.".

"Such as?" I asked.

"Well, for one thing, there's no such place as Priesti, Romania. And Skorzeny isn't a Romanian name. But the biggest problem is Skorzeny himself. Did the cops ever get a good look at him?"

"Yep. In fact, there were a lot of witnesses - cops and otherwise - who saw him at one time or another."

"How'd they describe him?"

"Tall, skinny, black hair, and really pale. The people who got the closest look at him said he had reddish eyes."

Bob's considered that for a second, and then said, "By 1970, Skorzeny would have been a vampire for something like thirty years - and probably more. Black Court vampires look pretty bad once they put on that many years. Like 'Night of the Walking Dead' kind of bad. On the other hand, the ectoplasmic disguise that Red Court vampires wear usually makes them look a lot prettier - an idealized form of their pre-vamp appearance. Neither of those fit with what the witnesses say they saw."

"No argument there."

"But the real problem is Skorzeny's actions," Bob continued. "For decades he played it cool, low-key, and smart. Then he comes to Vegas and goes nuts. Back-to-back murders. Raiding hospitals for blood. Public brawls with mortals where he openly displays supernatural powers. If he was a Black Court blood-sucker, he sure wanted everyone to know."

The Black Court deliberately keeps their actions as low-key as possible. Bram Stoker's "Dracula" is essentially a "how-to" guide on the strengths and weaknesses of Black Court vampires. The Black Court is stuck with the fact that everyone who has a taste for second-rate horror movies has a good idea how to destroy them. Nowadays, there's nowhere near as many Black Court vampires as there were before Stoker published his very popular little book.

It couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of guys.

"But if he was Red Court, that also doesn't fit," Bob noted. "They usually operate in quiet territorial packs - not as isolated, out-of-control loners."

"Could Skorzeny have been committing suicide by vampire hunter?" I suggested.

Bob hesitated a long while before responding. "Look, Harry, I don't claim to know much about the psychology of vampires, but most of them seem comfortable with their role in existence. I've never heard of a Black or Red Court vampire deciding to kill himself. And if one did, all he would have to do is watch a sunrise. He wouldn't have to paint a "Stake Me!" sign on himself.

"So what do you think, Bob?"

"I'm not sure, but it's possible that Skorzeny wasn't actually a vampire. He might have just wanted people to think he was a vampire. Which raises two obvious questions..."

I finished for Bob. "What was Skorzeny? And why was he being so obvious? Do you have any ideas?"

"In terms of what he was, there are about a dozen strong possibilites - and around a hundred lesser ones."

I nodded my head slowly. That was pretty much the same conclusion I'd come to.

"Who are you going to talk to first?" Bob asked.

"The coroner," I said as I reached for the phone.


	3. Chapter 3

COLD CASE - Chapter 3

Dr. Makurji lived in a suburb south of Las Vegas. The next morning, I took a cab to his home. The good doctor's house was just this side of being a mansion and the neighborhood was more of the same. A middle-aged Mexican maid answered the door and let me in. She led me into the living room full of furniture that looked under-used, and then fetched me a cup of coffee.

"Mr. Dresden?" Dr. Makurji asked after he entered the room. He was formally dressed in a full suit and tie. I got the impression that he was the kind of man who could not imagine meeting another human being dressed otherwise. That's not a put-down. It's just a way of doing things that I don't share and never will.

On the other hand, I had to give Dr. Makurji credit for not being be put off by either my duster or the glove on my left hand.

"Dr. Makurji," I replied. "Thanks for seeing me."

He offered his hand and we shook. He was a wizened and worn-looking man of medium height and his grip struck me as rather frail. There was something undefinable about him that made me worry about his health.

"I hope I'm not disturbing you," I said as I carefully released his hand.

He shook his head, "Oh, no, Mr. Dresden. I don't get many callers and I find the idea of talking to a private eye rather exciting. You say you're working for Mary Brandon's sister?"

Brandon had been Mrs. Winfield's maiden name. She had given me permission to identify her while I was doing the investigation. People are more inclined to cooperate with a P.I. who's helping a woman find out what happened to a dead sister than they are with a P.I. who's just asking irritating questions.

"Yes."

Dr. Makurji settled into an easy chair as his maid wordlessly put a cup of coffee on the table in front of him. "I'm happy to help. Ask your questions."

"Just let me confirm what the record has to say about the Skorzeny murders..."

"Four known deaths," Dr. Makurji broke in, his voice suddenly firm and authoritative. "All young, attractive, healthy, Caucasian women who were also casino employees. Their throat's were torn open. The trauma was reminiscent of the kind of damage that a large canine might inflict. Human saliva not belonging to the victims were found in the wounds in all four cases. I tried to blood-type the saliva, but other than the fact it was human I couldn't get a definite match. There was some bruising of the arms and upper bodies consistent with the victims being restrained by a person of considerable strength, but there were no ligature marks. All blood had been drained from the bodies by what I can only assume was a mechanical process, since none was found on or near the bodies. One victim had minor traces of recreational drugs in her system. The others did not. There were no signs of sexual assault."

Then Dr. Makurji hesitated and continued on awkwardly, "You may assure Mrs. Winfield that her sister's death was quick."

I looked Dr. Makurji in the eye, "Is that true, Dr. Makurji?"

The doctor looked back at me and something went out of him. He sighed and said, "Yes it is, Mr. Dresden. But there's not point in telling Mrs. Winfield that her sister and the other women died in fear and pain like hunted animals. Yes, their deaths were relatively swift, but..."

He ground to a halt. Then Dr. Makurji sighed again and continued.

"Skorzeny also killed a hospital orderly and two police officers, but those weren't at all like what happened to those women. The orderly was killed when he was thrown out of fourth story window. One police officer died of a broken neck. Another from a fractured skull that resulted in severe cerebral hemorrhaging. The latter two injuries were inflicted bare-handed. Skorzeny was incredibly powerful."

The doctor picked up his coffee and took a tentative sip.

"You said the female victims' throats were torn open by something like a dog bite?"

"Yes."

"So... we're talking something like fangs?"

The doctor hesitated, "I don't like to use that word. Too many people begin drawing wild conclusions. But... yes. Fangs."

"Did you ever come up with a theory as to how Skorzeny killed the women?" I asked, keeping my words as neutral as possible.

"Several. It's possible that he had some kind of device with fang-like protrusions that could compress in a manner similar to the closing of jaws. Or perhaps he had a fanged prosthetic that he fitted into his mouth. Given the human saliva found in the injuries the latter is actually more likely. After they killed Skorzeny, I told the police to keep an eye open for something like that when they were searching his house. They didn't find anything. I also suggested they look for some sort of suction and storage device that he used to drain the blood. Likewise, they found nothing."

"There wasn't an autopsy of Skorzeny?"

Dr. Makurji's eyes flashed irritably. "No, there was not. He was cremated so quickly that I never even saw his body."

"Look, Doc, I'm sorry to bring this up... but the victims were also cremated. And without the permission of their families. The settlement with the families put the blame on your office."

Dr. Makurji set his coffee cup down with a decisive thump. Some coffee sloshed onto the table.

"That is a lie! The error came from within the police department! Skorzeny's body never even entered my morgue. And his victims were removed at night and without my authorization. If I had been present I would have stopped that immediately!"

I held up my hands in surrender, "Easy, doc. So you were the fall guy for a police screw-up?"

"Absolutely! They even wanted to fire a completely blameless member of my staff! I'll have you know that I put an immediate end to that nonsense!"

I chuckled, picked up my coffee, and lifted it towards Dr. Makurji in salute. "Good for you, doc. Good for you. I've seen too many foul-ups hidden by blaming whoever happened to be the lowest guy on the totem pole."

Dr. Makurji took a deep breath. Then another one. Never piss of a man of Dr. Makurji's precision and devotion to procedure. I suspect he was a pain-in-the-ass to the police department from the moment they accused him of incompetence until the day he retired.

I didn't see any point in telling the doctor that the cops were probably right to burn all of the corpses as soon as possible. In fact, they should have burned the victims even sooner than they did.

I got out my chair and walked over to the living room's fireplace.

"Interesting weapon," I said thoughtfully.

A crossbow was displayed just above the mantle-piece. There were also several large crosses on the mantlepiece itself, essentially flanking the crossbow. The crosses looked like valuable antiques. If anyone entered the living room, the crosses would immediately be in their line of sight.

Dr. Makurji stood next to me and smiled distantly. "Every man is allowed an eccentric hobby, Mr. Dresden. Target shooting with crossbows is mine."

"I see you keep it loaded."

There was a slight pause as Dr. Makurji examined me closer. "You are familiar with crossbows?"

"I know some people who are into ancient weapons," I said blandly.

"I keep the weapon loaded in case of a home invasion. I check the tension of the string every now and then and replace it in case of wear."

"Most people would keep a gun around for home defense."

"I also own several firearms, but I'm wary of keeping guns in the open."

"So how long have you been shooting crossbows?"

Dr. Makurji shifted uncomfortably. "Quite a few years."

I couldn't help myself. I grinned at Dr. Makurji and said, "Let me guess. Ever since 1970?"

"I don't recall exactly," said the man who obviously never forgot anything.

"Dr. Makurji, have you ever met Shelley Forbes?"

He frowned, "The woman the police rescued from Skorzeny? No. Why do you ask?"

"She was in Skorzeny's hands for several days. But there isn't much in the official record about her."

"1970 was a different time, Mr. Dresden. A woman held captive by a man like Skorzeny was treated with more deference than would be the case today. Since Skorzeny was dead, her testimony wasn't particularly needed. I imagine she was questioned to establish certain basic facts and then left alone. Perhaps you should ask Sergeant Sykes."

"Sykes?" I repeated automatically. That name wasn't in the files.

Dr. Makurji nodded. "Sergeant Sykes was a young patrol officer back in 1970. He was involved in that fight with Skorzeny in which the other two police officers were killed. As far as I know, he's the last policeman still in service from that time. He has always had an interest in the Skorzeny case."

* * *

I said my goodbyes to Dr. Makurji and he encouraged me to call again if I had more questions. It was obvious that the man was sincere. I suspect retirement wasn't sitting too well with him.

Back in the hotel room, Bob and I went over what I'd learned.

"So the doc was pretty sure that the perp had fangs?" Bob asked thoughtfully.

"Yep," I replied, "which means Skorzeny wasn't Black Court. They don't have fangs."

"But Red Court vamps do," Bob pointed out. "Did you get a good look at the bolt in the Doc's crossbow?"

"It was a sharpened wooden dowel with some minimal fletching. It looked handmade. You could smell the garlic oil that it had been soaked in. There was a small case on the mantlepiece that was the right size to hold maybe a half-dozen more bolts."

"And the crosses?" Bob asked.

"Old, large, and heavy looking. Definitely antiques. Judging by the iconography, probably Spanish in origin."

"So if somebody of the blood-sucking persuasion were to get in the house, the doc could fall back to the fireplace. The crosses would hopefully make the vamp hesitate while the doc made a grab for his crossbow." Bob sounded as if he grudgingly approved.

"I think that's the idea," I replied.

"All of that would help against a Black Court vampire," Bob pointed out, "but it would be a lot less useful against a Red Court vampire. Did you notice any other anti-vampire defenses?"

"The maid was wearing a silver cross on a necklace. But that might just be her own. Of course, I didn't see the rest of the house. I'm thinking Doc Makurji figured it out back in 1970 and he's been a little nervous about sundown ever since. But I don't think the Doc is really in-the-know. He's just be going with Stoker on this one - not realizing that he might have the details wrong."

"That sounds right. So what's next?"

"Sergeant Sykes."


	4. Chapter 4

COLD CASE - Chapter 4

A few years back, Murphy got me a police consultant's identity card for the Chicago Police Department. Even outside of Chicago, it can come in pretty handy. This time, it managed to get me inside a Las Vegas Police Department precinct house.

Sergeant Howard Sykes was... big. At something like six-five, we could look each other directly in the eye, but unlike me he was muscled like a body builder. If I had to guess, his weight was something like three hundred pounds and none of it was fat. Which was impressive given that his hair was almost entirely gray and he was the oldest patrol officer on the force. Off hand, I assumed he had to have his uniforms specially made.

We were sitting in the break room of his precinct house. Sykes had just got off shift when I caught up to him. While I had waited for him, I had the opportunity to talk to some of Sykes' fellow officers. Sykes came across as something of a real life action-movie character. He was the most decorated officer on the force. He'd been shot and knifed multiple times in the line of duty. He'd refused repeated offers of promotion to detective. I'd talked to one cop who flatly said that Sykes had saved his life - and that he wasn't the only man in the department who could say that.

It was obvious that his fellow cops respected Sykes a lot. Maybe more than anyone else in the department.

"Skorzeny," Sykes repeated as he eyed me suspicously. He had severe grey eyes, but his voice was surprisingly mild. "Why do you want to know about Skorzeny?"

"I've been hired by a relative of one of his victims. She thinks there may have been more to the case than we know."

Sykes seemed to relax a bit. "I heard there was a P.I. asking questions about the Skorzeny case."

"Actually, that was probably someone else. My client had another guy working for her. He did good work, but my client wanted me to take a second look."

"It's been a long time since the Skorzeny case, Mr..."

"Dresden," I supplied. "Harry Dresden."

"I've never heard of a P.I. by that name."

"I'm from Chicago."

"Who's your client?" Sykes asked.

"Her name's Winfield. She's Mary Brandon's sister. You know, Sykes, maybe you should have made the jump to detective. You're pretty good at saying nothing much while making other people cough up information."

He smiled wryly at me. "My wife is picking me up in a little while. You have until she shows up."

"Tell me about Shelley Forbes."

Sykes hesitated, "The only one of Skorzeny's victims who survived. We found her in his house. She was in bad shape. I hear she still lives here in town."

"What did Skorzeny do to her?"

That bleak look was back in Sykes' eyes. "You're going to have to ask her about that."

That was clearly a no-go zone with Sykes, so I switched subjects.

"I hear you were in that fight with Skorzeny. The one on the evening of May 26."

"Yes."

"What happened?"

Sykes was silent for a moment. Then he sighed and said, "We got our asses kicked and Skorzeny got away."

"One guy? Against something like a dozen cops?"

Sykes stared at me as he bit back an obviously angry response.

"Look, Sykes, I know two cops died that night," I said quietly. "I just can't figure out how."

Obviously frustrated, Sykes ran a huge hand through his crew cut. Then words suddenly seemed to blurt out of him.

"I've tried to explain this before and nobody gets it. Skorzeny was incredible. He threw us around like we were kids. We did everything we'd been trained to do in terms hand-to-hand combat. Choke holds. Restraint holds. Vital-point strikes. None of it worked. So then we shot him again and again, but that didn't seem to do anything either. He just wouldn't go down. By the end... it was like we were just paralyzed. Nothing made sense. And I was right next to Diaz when Skorzeny hit him and his head suddenly tilted all wrong..."

Sykes ground to a sudden halt. You could tell he thought he'd said too much.

"I'm sorry, Sykes," I said - and I meant it. As I spoke, I carefully raised my magical senses. Once I saw what I was looking for, I lowered them again.

Suddenly, Sykes looked over my shoulder. The relieved expression on his face was obvious.

"My wife's here," he said as he got to his feet. He was pretty limber for a man of his size and age.

Sykes' wife was an instant jealousy attack. She was a tiny Asian woman who was decades younger than her husband - and maybe two hundred pounds lighter. And she was gorgeous. Her smile as she saw her man was the real thing and they exchanged a kiss worthy of a pair of newlyweds.

* * *

"Sykes sounds like something out of Hollywood," Bob commented.

I shrugged, "If they ever decide to make a movie about Sykes, they should have Schwazenneger play him."

"And you say his wife is seriously hot?"

"Yep."

"Does this Sykes guy sound a little too good to be true? Or is it just me?" Bob asked thoughtfully.

"It isn't just you," I said. "There was an aura around Sykes. Somewhere along the line, he's been affected by magic - and it changed him. But I couldn't tell much more than that. And then there's this."

I held up a photocopy of a grainy picture so that Bob could see it.

"What am I looking at?" Bob asked.

"The 1969 graduation photo of the Las Vegas police academy. I got it from the library on the way back here. A copying machine died in the process."

"I salute it's brave sacrifice. And this is important how?"

"Howard Sykes is in the second row - third from the left."

Bob paused as he examined the picture. "I thought you said Sykes is a giant. The guy in the second row, third from the left, is a skinny kid."

"Yeah, he is. Now, I can believe that maybe Sykes became a serious weight-lifter after being thrown around by Skorzeny. But the guy in the picture is about normal height compared to the other officers. No amount of body building makes a guy add another five or six inches of height."

"So Sykes isn't quite human."

"But he's not a vamp. I watched him and his wife walk out of the precinct and into broad daylight."


	5. Chapter 5

COLD CASE - Chapter 5

It looked like the best remaining lead was Shelley Forbes, but talking to her was almost certain to be a problem. It was pretty sure she wouldn't enjoy talking about her time as Skorzeny's prisoner.

There wasn't much about Shelley Forbes in the filebox. Her interview with the police about Skorzeny was long gone - just like most of the official records about the case. After being rescued from Skorzeny, she got on with her life. There was a brief marriage that didn't last long. She ran a successful business breeding and training dogs. There were a few newspaper articles about her that were of the "where-are-they-now" variety, but they were pretty superficial. Nobody seemed interested in knowing the details about her captivity. Under normal circumstances, I could respect that.

"You know, there's something strange about the local newspapers," I told Bob.

"What? You already said the cover-up involved the papers."

"Yeah, but while the Skorzeny killings were happening, it was a big story. But as soon as he died, so did the story. Usually, reporters will milk a story like this for quite a while. Long followups, retrospectives, anniversary stories. You don't see that here."

"That's not a big surprise, Harry. Ordinary folks steer clear of things that smell of the supernatural. They may not even consciously realize they're doing it. Reporters are no different. Of course..."

Bob hesitated for a second.

"Of course?" I echoed.

"Sometimes there's a reporter who hangs on to a story longer than the others - even after it becomes obvious that the story is something other people don't want to hear about. If you can find one of those guys, he might be pretty useful."

"That might be worth checking on."

"I'm honored to be of service. So how are you going to approach this Forbes lady?"

I shook my head, "I'm going to be honest and tell her who I'm working for and why. And then I'll ask her some painful questions about things she really doesn't want to remember."

"Your job sucks."

I really couldn't argue with that.

* * *

Shelley Forbes was in her early sixties, but looked trim and healthy. She had dark eyes and her hair had once been much the same shade, although now her hair was trending gray. Her home was in a part of central Las Vegas that was considerably less posh than where Dr. Makurji lived. And although she was no longer in the dog-breeding business, she still had a few dogs.

Big dogs.

"Dracula! Get away!" she snapped at an inquisitive - and huge - Irish wolfhound. Dracula backed away, found a comfortable spot on the floor, and flopped down. His eyes never left me.

That's right. Her dog was named Dracula. Her other two dogs were named Orloff and Nosferatu. Apparently Shelley liked the classics. And I was honored to be in the presence of so many members of the nobility.

We were sitting in her living room. It was comfortably cluttered and smelled of dog. The books on a nearby bookshelf were about dogs. And the pictures on the walls were of - surprise - dogs.

"I don't think I ever met Mrs. Winfield," Shelley said as she took a sip from a bottle of beer. She had offered me one, but I'd declined. Mac has ruined me in terms of mass-market stuff.

"She hasn't lived in Las Vegas since she was a youngster," I said.

Shelley nodded, her eyes examining me carefully. I freely admit that my height and clothes make me an odd-looking character. A lot of people react badly to that. But Shelley didn't seem to be frightened of me. Of course, I imagine her dogs had something to do with that. The three of them together probably weighed over four hundred pounds.

I was suddenly glad to be wearing my enchanted duster. I shifted my wrist just enough to cause my shield bracelet to jingle. My blasting rod was tucked inside my duster, and I realized that - without intending to - I'd shifted slightly so that I could make a quick grab for it if I had to.

"So what do you want, Mr. Dresden?" Shelley asked. She seemed eerily self-possessed.

"I'm sorry to bring this up, but I was hoping you could tell me what you know about Janos Skorzeny."

Shelley took another hit from her beer and said, "He was a vampire."

I think there was a long pause while I absorbed what she had said.

"What did he do to you?" I asked warily.

"He kidnapped me, dragged me off to his creepy house, and tied me to a bed. Then he bit me and drank my blood until I passed out. I thought I was dying, but I eventually woke up. He had a bottle of hospital blood set up on a bedpost and had connected it to my arm with a hose and needle. He was giving me a transfusion. He kept doing that: drink from me, give me a transfusion to keep me alive, then drink from me again."

She held up her beer bottle and looked at it thoughtfully.

"You sure you don't want a beer?" she asked me.

Stars and stones.

* * *

Actually, the way this conversation was going, I wanted something a lot stronger, but I accepted the beer.

"I told the cops what I just told you," Shelley said. "I told reporters. I told my family and friends. Nobody believed me. Hell, the cops found me tied to that bed with a needle in my arm and bite marks on my neck and body and I don't think they believed me. Everyone told me I was crazy. A shrink tried to tell me that Skorzeny actually raped me and I twisted that around in my mind so that I remembered something completely different. "Restructured memory" is what he called it."

Shelly Forbes hesitated, then an angry, off-center, grin quirked over her face. "Still and all, that's a good way of describing what happened. "Restructured memory". Everything about Skorzeny ended up being restructured memory. Nobody wanted to admit what he was, so they buried things and changed things and forgot things until he was something else."

"What did Skorzeny look like?" I asked.

"Tall. Not as tall as you, but still pretty tall. Slender, really pale skin, and black hair. Every time I saw him, he was wearing a suit and tie, and his clothes looked expensive. He had one of those long faces, but it was his eyes that you noticed. His eyes were strange - it was like they were always bloodshot. And his teeth..."

Shelley paused. For the first time, she seemed to be rattled. Her hand that wasn't holding a beer bottle moved and then stopped. My guess was that she had wanted to put it on her throat, but wouldn't allow herself that moment of weakness.

"His teeth were like in the movies. Sometimes normal. Sometimes with long canines."

One of the dogs - Orloff, I think - padded over and put his head in Shelley's lap. She began absent-mindedly scratching him behind the ears.

"How did you get free?" I asked.

Nosferatu got jealous and wandered into range to get his own share of attention. Orloff surrendered his place and lay down next to Shelley.

Dracula didn't budge. He just kept watch on me.

"A guy showed up. Later on, I found out he was a reporter whose name was Kolchak. He snuck into the bedroom where Skorzeny had me tied up. He was about to let me loose when Skorzeny came back into the room and found us."

Shelley sighed and shook her head.

"Kolchak started waving around a big silver cross. He used it to drive Skorzeny out of the room and Kolchak followed him. After a few seconds, I heard a fight downstairs. Eventually, there was some shooting, but that didn't end the fight. Skorzeny was hissing and growling like an animal throughout the whole thing. Then something happened - I'm not sure what. I heard some pounding and everything went quiet. After a while, a couple of cops showed up and cut me loose."

"When they took me downstairs, Skorzeny's body was there. There was a stake through his heart and strange, pale-colored blood everywhere. Kolchak was there too, talking to some cops. Then the cops took me to the hospital."

"The official story is that Skorzeny was killed in a gunfight with Las Vegas PD," I said quietly. "And there's no mention of this Kolchak guy."

"Mr. Dresden, the official story is full of crap," Shelley said bitterly.

* * *

"Okay, that makes no freaking sense at all," Bob sighed.

"Tell me about it," I said. I was laying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling.

"Skorzeny has fangs, so he's Red Court. However, he's effected by a symbol of faith, so he's Black Court. And he just plain doesn't look like either a Black Court or a Red Court vampire. And the pale blood that Forbes described? That's more like White Court."

"Bob," I said tiredly, "it's time to start thinking out of the box."

"Exactly," Bob snapped. "Whatever Skorzeny was - he wasn't your ordinary, every-day, vampire."

"Yep," I said. That's right - I live in a world where the phrase "ordinary, every-day, vampire" makes sense.

"Did Forbes have anything else for you?" Bob persisted.

"Not directly. But she has the same aura that Sykes has. She's been effected by magic in the past - and some of it is still with her."

Bob was quiet for a few seconds.

"Nothing odd about her?"

"Nope. Nothing except the house full of huge dogs and her complete willingness to talk about her horrifying encounter with a blood-sucking monster."

Bob fell silent again. Then he finally said, "Want a suggestion where to go next?"

"Sure."

"See if Kolchak is still around."

"I already figured that one out."


	6. Chapter 6

COLD CASE - Chapter 6

I spent the morning in the library, then I went back to my hotel room and dug Bob out of his traveling case.

"Kolchak died in Los Angeles, back in 2006," I told him.

"Damn," Bob growled regretfully. "Did you find out anything about him?"

I flopped down in a chair and opened my Burger King bag.

"Once upon a time, Kolchak was fairly well known. He worked for some big papers in New York, Chicago, and Boston and broke some fairly important stories. But if you read between the lines - all of the times he moved from paper to paper - he had a problem keeping a job. Apparently he hit the skids in the late sixties. He ended up here in Las Vegas in late 1968 and began working for a second-string local paper called the Las Vegas Evening News. After the Skorzeny killings he fell off the map for a while. Then he eventually ended up in Chicago, working for a small-time press service."

"Chicago?"

I nodded, "I've already called Murphy. She said she'd ask around."

"Did Kolchak write any articles about Skorzeny?"

"The Evening News closed down years ago and, oddly enough, the municipal library and the university library don't seem to have any copies - physical or on microfiche - of the Evening News for the months of May and June of 1970."

"Funny that," Bob said dryly.

"Very funny," I agreed as I took a bite out of my burger.

"So Kolchak's a dead-end until Murphy gets back to you?"

I had finish my mouthful of burger before I could answer. "Not completely. I checked up on the local journalists. There's a lady named Edna Worth who works for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. She's a columnist nowadays, but she was around when Skorzeny was running amok. I'm interested to hear what she has to say about Skorzeny. And she just might have known Kolchak."

* * *

"Janos Skorzeny and Carl Kolchak," Edna Worth said slowly.

I nodded.

"Wow," she said - stretching the word out.

We were sitting in her office. It was a tiny room so packed with books, magazines, and newspapers that I had to turn sideways and wiggle my way to the visitor's chair. Edna was almost hidden behind the material that was piled-up on her desk. She was a small, grandmotherly-looking woman with rectangular glasses. It was easier to imagine her baking cookies for a pack of grandkids than working in that office.

I waited for Edna to decide what she was going to say.

"There was a time when mentioning the name Janos Skorzeny was a big no-no," she finally said. "The word was out that getting too interested in him would cost you your job. That's pretty much what happened to Carl."

I leaned forward, "You knew Kolchak?"

Edna let out a full-throated belly-laugh. "Did I know Carl? Of course I did! He was one of the best reporters I ever met. And he didn't mind talking to a newly hired so-called 'girl reporter'. Believe me, that was a rarity in those days. Most of the other reporters at the time assumed I was around to fetch coffee and dutifully accept the occasional pat on the ass. Carl was actually decent to me."

Then her face fell, "Carl passed away a few years ago. I didn't hear about it until a few months later. I missed his funeral."

I let her have a few seconds for regret before I continued. "You say he lost his job because of the Skorzeny murders?"

With a slight shake of her head, Edna came back to the present. "That was the story going around town at the time. You have to understand, Mr. Dresden, the mob had a lot more influence back in those days. And that colored how everything was done in this town. Sometimes it seemed as if the police were just the biggest gang around - not law-enforcement officers. And the casinos openly owned city councilmen and the occasional mayor. Carl kept pushing on the subject of Skorzeny and eventually someone decided to push back."

"What was the problem?" I asked.

Edna hesitated. "Carl had some wild ideas about Skorzeny. Ideas that if they got out might have slowed down the tourist trade that kept this town alive. Somebody important decided that wasn't going to happen. The next thing you knew, Carl and a bunch of other people suddenly decided to leave town. And some folks just plain vanished."

"What did Kolchak know that was so dangerous?"

With a sigh, Mrs Worth said, "He thought Skorzeny wasn't really human. That he was... something else."

"Something else? What kind of something else?"

Edna gave me a long, long look. "Mr. Dresden... you've read about the Skorzeny case?"

"Some," I admitted.

"If someone was willing to color outside of the lines, and they were looking at the events surrounding Janos Skorzeny, what conclusion do you suppose they might come to?"

Edna was testing me. I had to put up of shut up.

I looked Edna in the eyes. "It wouldn't be completely crazy to decide that Skorzeny wasn't just a nut who thought he was a vampire. That he actually was a vampire."

Edna relaxed. "That's what Carl thought. And some people say he more than thought it. He proved it."

"What do you think, Edna?"

She smiled at me. "I'm not a young woman, Mr. Dresden. In fact, I'm old enough that I'm allowed to be a bit eccentric. However, I also have to be careful. If I'm too eccentric, then I'll be politely informed that it's time to retire. And I really like my job."

"I understand. Look, anything you tell me about Skorzeny and Kolchak is off the record. Your name won't be mentioned if I use any of what you tell me in my report."

Edna leaned forward, her eyes suddenly intense. When you got down to it, she was a journalist. She wanted to tell the story.

"Carl got deep into the Skorzeny case. Deeper even than the cops. Eventually, he decided that Skorzeny was the real thing - an actual vampire. He tried to tell the authorities, but they weren't buying what Carl was telling them."

"Carl eventually found out where Skorzeny lived. Then he broke in and pounded a wooden stake through Skorzeny's chest. A friend of Carl's - an FBI agent named Bernie Jenks - apparently helped Carl do the deed. Also in the house was a woman named Shelley Forbes. Skorzeny was feeding off of her. He would drink her blood until she was almost dead, then he would fill her up with blood he'd stolen from local hospitals, and then feed from her again."

"The authorities used Skorzeny's death against Carl. They told him that unless he got out of town he'd end up in prison or an asylum. Nobody was on Kolchak's side, because if they were then they'd have to admit that they also thought that Skorzeny was an actual vampire. So Carl didn't have any choice but to leave."

"But Carl wasn't the only person to get his walking papers. The editor of the Evening News - a fellow named Tony Vincenzo - was allowed to resign, but he also had to leave town. The witnesses in the Skorzeny case all either got real quiet, suddenly left town, or just plain vanished. The legal system produced a grand jury report and then lost all of the evidence. Eventually, almost all of the official paperwork about the case also went missing. The local media dropped the story as soon as reasonably possible. And I've noticed that you can't seem to find any newspapers from the time. Likewise, none of the TV stations seem to have any tape about the Skorzeny murders."

"You said some people actually vanished in the cover-up?" I asked slowly.

She nodded. "Yeah, but you might not want to read too much into that. Las Vegas has always been full of people who are just passing through - and are maybe a little shady. Some folks might have just assumed that being told to get out of town was a good sign that is was time to take on a new identity. That was a lot easier to do back in those days."

Then Edna frowned. "But there was one disappearance that really bothered me. Carl had a girlfriend, a pretty casino hostess named Gail Foster. Word was that he was going to ask her to marry him. She was one of the people who vanished. After he left town, Carl spent some time trying to find her. I know that because he asked me about her a couple of times. But he didn't have any luck."

"What happened to Kolchak after he left town?"

A regretful expression came over Edna's face. "Carl's career was already on the downside when he came to Las Vegas. He... well he wouldn't back off once he got his teeth into a story. He pissed off a lot of people. So he got fired from a bunch of big papers. After he was thrown out of Las Vegas, he wasted a lot of time trying to convince someone to print his story about Skorzeny. There were no takers, but in the process he convinced just about everyone in the business that he was a nut. The only thing that kept him in journalism was Tony Vincenzo."

"His editor here in Las Vegas?"

Edna nodded. "Yes. Tony and Carl had a pretty strange relationship. Tony respected Carl as a reporter - and maybe regretted his role in allowing Carl to be fired and in covering up the Skorzeny story. Tony eventually ended up as an editor for a Seattle paper, and he hired Kolchak. Then, believe it or not, they both got fired again."

I think my eyebrows rose about a yard.

"I don't know the details about what happened in Seattle," Edna continued, "but apparently Carl ran into another serial killer that he figured had a supernatural explanation. The paper owner didn't buy it, so Carl got fired. And then Tony got fired for hiring Carl and letting him run wild."

"What happened then?"

"Tony got a job working for something called the Independent News Service. It was a down-and-mostly-out press service based out of Chicago. It was obviously a dead end, but it was all that Tony could manage. And then he hired Kolchak again."

"You're kidding!" I said in amazement. "Was Vincenzo a saint or just a glutton for punishment?"

"He was Carl's friend. He didn't want to admit it, but he was."

"How long did they last at the press service?"

"Amazingly enough, they managed to hang on. I hear that Carl kept running into strange stories, but Tony reigned in the worst of Carl's excesses. I think by that time they were so far down on the news media food chain that they just weren't a real threat to anyone. And I hear that Tony had a pretty good relationship with the guy who owned Independent News Service. So they managed to keep their jobs for longer than you might think."

"When did that end?"

"Tony died on the job back in 1983. A heart attack got him. Carl only lasted a few months under the new editor. But somebody upstairs in INS must have had a soft-spot for him. He got an early retirement deal instead of being thrown out onto the street."

Edna paused. Then she closed her eyes. "After that, Carl wandered around, pursuing stories on his own that nobody would print. He didn't have a paper, but he just couldn't stop being a newspaperman."

The last word came out kind of choked. I took a sudden interest in the barely visible window while Edna wiped her eyes.

"Carl finally settled down in California sometime in the '90s," Edna continued, her voice stronger now. "We met a few times for dinner and drinks. After the internet became a thing, I tried to talk him into starting a web-site, but he just laughed and asked me where you poured the ink into a computer. By then, he was a relic from a different era."

"He sounds like he was quite a man," I said quietly. And I meant it.

Edna gave me a sharp look. "Carl fought things that other people didn't even want to admit existed. He saved lives, Mr. Dresden. And damn few people know it."


	7. Chapter 7

COLD CASE - Chapter 7

I thanked Edna for her help and went back to the hotel. I was planning to spend a lot of time on the phone and I needed a comfortable and private place to do that.

As soon as I entered the room, Bob began making muffled noises from inside his case. I took the time to deactivate the wards I had put on the case and pulled him out.

"What?" I asked as I put him back on top of the TV set.

"How'd the interview with Mary Worth go?" Bob asked eagerly. He was really getting into the case.

"It's Edna Worth," I corrected.

"Whatever. What did she have to say about Kolchak?"

"Short version: he was a loose cannon who wrecked his life in an obsessive and quixotic search for the truth."

"Huh. Does that remind you of anyone?"

"Up yours, Bob."

"Unfortunately, I don't have a 'yours' to 'up'. Anything else about Kolchak? Like, you know, actual information?"

I ran Bob through what I'd learned in the interview. After I finished, he was actually quiet for a good thirty seconds. That might have been a record.

"Your summary version of Kolchak's character seems pretty accurate," he finally said.

I shrugged. "Any more thoughts on just what the hell Skorzeny really was?"

"Not at the moment. Like I said, there are too many possibilities. But it does occur to me that we've skipped something."

"What?"

"Forbes and Skykes. You said both of them have a magical aura."

"Yeah."

"What kind of aura?"

"The magical kind."

"Oh for... Harry, you really can't do any better than that?"

"Not without some preparation. Or by using the Sight."

"Okay, let's not drop the Sight-bomb just yet. Can you set up a ritual?"

"To do that, I'd need the cooperation of Sykes or Forbes. Or I'd have to kidnap one of them."

"Hmm. Neither of them sounds like a good candidate for kidnapping. Sykes is an armed giant and Forbes has too much history with being kidnapped - and some really big and suspicious dogs. What about alchemy?"

"I didn't exactly bring my lab with me."

"But you brought me. And that's all you need. We'll need a small wood burner, purified water, some brandy or cognac, raw hazelnut, oak ash..."

"Whoa!" I said, holding my hand up. "Let me get something to write on. And what kind of potion are we talking about?"

"It's called the Draught of Prismatic Sight. And I hear it doesn't even taste bad."

"What's it do?" I asked as I pulled a small notebook out of my bag.

"It allows wizards with incredibly poorly developed magical senses to fine-tune their understanding of magical auras. It does that by showing patterns of colors that have consistent meanings in terms of..."

Then the phone rang and saved me from the rest of Bob's lecture.

* * *

"It's Murphy," said the scratchy voice on the other end of the phone. So far, the hotel phone system hadn't blown up. I was actually impressed, but it probably had to do with the fact that the phones were antediluvian.

"Hey, Murphy. Did you find out anything about Kolchak?"

"My Dad knew him," Murphy said flatly.

That brought me up short. Captain Jack Murphy was a sensitive subject. Back in the day, he had been one the black cats - a group of senior detectives in Chicago's 13th precinct. They were the guys who dealt with supernatural problems. That job was now handled by an outfit called Special Investigations, which was run by non-other than Lieutenant Karrin Murphy. You'd think her father probably would have been proud of her, but maybe not. Because when Murphy was just a little girl, Captain Collin 'Jack' Murphy swallowed his revolver while sitting at his desk.

Like I said. It was a sensitive subject.

"My Mom says that Dad didn't like Kolchak," Murphy added. That made me wince. Murphy and her mom didn't exactly get along. If Murphy had gone all the way to her mom for information, then I owed her big time.

"What was the problem?" I asked, although I was already pretty sure what I was going to hear.

"Kolchak kept sticking his nose into black cat cases. Dad didn't like that. The black cats had a pretty strong policy about keeping the existence of the supernatural as quiet as possible. Apparently there were some really loud arguments with Kolchak - and more than a few threats."

"That sounds like Kolchak," I said resignedly.

"One old timer told me it got so bad that there was actually some talk about doing something permanent to Kolchak."

"That doesn't sound like your dad," I said flatly. Which was weird, since I'd never known Murphy's father. But I'd developed a good idea of his character by hanging around with his daughter.

"Yeah. Dad shut that down pretty quick. He said Kolchak was too useful as a bird-dog. Kolchak had a habit of finding things - and dealing with them - that the black cats didn't even know were out there. Apparently Dad had a private nickname for Kolchak. He called him the Night Stalker."

"Again, that sounds like Kolchak. What sort of things did he run into?"

Murphy sighed, "You name it. Vampires, werewolves, ghosts, swamp monsters, lizard men, aliens, headless bikers, and more. It's like a paranormal laundry list."

"Really?" I said slowly. That was quite a list. In fact, I'd call it an extremely-hard-to-survive list. "You say he ran into vampires? Plural?"

I heard the sounds of paper being shuffled on Murphy's end of the phone call. "Yes. The story you told me - that Kolchak got bounced out of Vegas after a run-in with a vampire - is actually known around here, but the details are hazy. But then something happened in Los Angeles that's better known among the retired black cats."

"Really? What?"

"It was three years after Kolchak left Las Vegas. People were being drained of blood along the highway stretching from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. That caught Kolchak's attention and he went out there to check on it. Then more people died in Los Angeles - including four guys from the L.A. Rams. One of them was drained of blood and the other three were beaten to death"

"The Godzilla Gang killings?" I said in surprise. "That was a part of this?"

"You've heard of that?" Murphy said. She sounded surprised, too.

"It's a big story in football history. It always did sound kind of strange, but I never heard about one of them being drained of blood. The case was never solved."

"Well, I think Kolchak solved it."

"What happened?"

"A day or so after Kolchak got to Los Angeles somebody set fire to a big cross on a local hill. LAPD showed up and found Kolchak on the scene, along with the body of a woman with a wooden stake through her heart. The body had apparently been recently ambulatory, but the Coroner swore up and down that she'd been dead for at least three years. The vic was named Kathryn Rawlins. Get this - she was a prostitute from Las Vegas who vanished around the time the Skorzeny murders were happening."

I whistled.

"Kolchak was arrested and charged with murder, but he was released in record time. I think Dad may have vouched for Kolchak with LAPD."

"Impressive," I said slowly. "Kolchak aced two blood-suckers more-or-less on his own. One in Las Vegas and one in Los Angeles. There aren't too many men who can say that."

"Look, Harry. I was with you when we killed those Black Court vampires and their Renfields. It took you, me, Kincaid, and Ebenezer - and it was still a near thing. So how does an ordinary reporter run into a vampire and get away alive? Twice?"

"I don't think Kolchak was running into Black Court vampires," I said.

"Still..." Murphy began.

"And I'm beginning to wonder if Kolchak was human," I added.

Murphy went silent.


	8. Chapter 8

COLD CASE - Chapter 8

Bob and I spent the rest of the afternoon brewing the potion. That wasn't easy without the proper equipment, and the fact that my left hand was all but useless didn't help. The bathroom was a wreck by the time we were done, with odd stains in the sink and floor and a strange stench coming out of the bathtub drain. I tried my best to clean it up, but I was still pretty sure that the hotel manager was going to end up having words with me.

"So how does this work?" I asked as I suspiciously eyed a small vial of oily-looking liquid.

"You drink it and look at the people or things you think might be magical," Bob replied.

I rolled my eyes. "Really? Gee, thanks, Bob. I'm glad to have a genius like you working for me. Do you happen to have a few more details?"

"Sure, but I should warn you that there's a reason you've never heard of this potion before. For one thing, it doesn't last long - about an hour - and it doesn't give the clearest response. Basically, you see color patterns in the subject's aura. The colors have meaning, but the meanings aren't obvious unless you have a lot of experience with that sort of thing. For a rookie, the colors have to be interpreted, which means you'll have to tell me what you see. Oh, and the potion knocks you a little loopy. Don't do anything that requires clear thinking or fast reflexes. Which means you shouldn't get into any fights or try to cast any magic."

The suspicious glare I was giving the potion turned into an alarmed glare. "Uh, Bob, you seem to be telling me I won't be worth a damn while I'm under the influence. Do I have to remind you that I don't always get to pick when I get into a fight? And that some aspects of this case are kind of scary?"

"I know. I know. Maybe we should try something else first?"

Then I sighed. "No. At this point we don't have a lot of options."

* * *

I wanted a visual on both Sykes and Forbes, but since it sounded like I was going to have problems while I was under the influence of the potion, I needed help.

"What's the plan?" Edna asked, trying hard to hide her excitement. She was the only person in town that I figured I could trust. Also, she'd been a columnist for too long and the chance to do something that approximated honest-to-God street reporting had caught her interest. Telling her that this was about helping the family of a Skorzeny victim, and maybe getting Kolchak some credit for the good he'd done had sealed the deal for her.

"Nothing fancy," I said. "You'll drive me to Shelley Forbes house and knock on her door. I'll wait in the car while you ask her a few harmless questions."

Then I held up one of those cheap digital cameras. The kind you buy in a blister pack for $20. It had undoubtedly died the moment I touched it. "Then I'll get a few shots of her with this."

Edna frowned and asked the obvious question. "Why?"

"There were some oddities with her story when I met her earlier," I replied. "I need to do some checking on her." Which, after all, was the truth. I just didn't really need any pictures.

Edna nodded and said, "That's pretty old-school." What I'd just suggested was actually a classic trick for getting pictures of people that might otherwise be a problem to photograph. Before the Supreme Court told journalists that they could jam a camera in anyone's face and snap away without the subject having any recourse, most news photographers learned that trick early in their careers. So it was nothing new to Edna.

"After that, I'd like to go to Sykes' precinct house during the evening shift change. I know what Sykes looks like, but if you could point out and name some of the other senior cops, I'd appreciate it. I take it you know those guys?"

Edna tried not to look insulted. "Of course," she said.

* * *

Edna drove a massive Cadillac that probably measured fuel efficiency in gallons per mile instead of the other way around. However, Edna expertly wove it in and out of traffic without difficulty. I suspected the other automobiles were merely submitting to the Cadillac's obvious Alpha Car status. However, it wasn't exactly the vehicle I would have chosen for low-key surveillance.

I needn't have worried. Edna parked the car well down the street from Shelley's place, using a cowering subcompact for partial cover. From inside the Cadillac, I had no problem seeing over the subcompact. However, a casual observer wouldn't have a clear view of the Cadillac.

As Edna walked down the sidewalk towards Shelley's house, I slugged down the potion.

There was no delay. My vision instantly changed. And it changed radically. Suddenly, everything had a fuzzy aura around it. Houses, cars, and other objects had a plain translucent border. Living things like birds, a nearby squirrel, and a cat that was taking a stealthy interest in the squirrel, had flickering light-blue auras. As the squirrel noticed the cat, he flashed orange before scampering up a softly aquamarine tree. The cat lashed it's tail redly and then irritably stalked away.

As she knocked on Shelley's door, Edna was a determined purple tinged with an excited violet fringe.

After a brief pause, Shelley opened the door.

Her aura was a riot of red tiger-striped highlights over an outline of pale black. It looked alien, aggressive, and pissed-off. And it seemed to scream "inhuman".

"Hell's bells," I whispered to myself.

* * *

"Is something wrong?" Edna asked once she got back.

"I'm kind of dizzy," I said. And that was dead true. The potion was hitting me like a sledgehammer. I tried to pocket the useless camera. It slipped out of my hand and fell between my feet. As I bent over to pick it up, I banged my head against the dashboard.

"Christ, Harry. If I hadn't seen you sober as a judge just a few minutes ago, I'd swear you were drunk."

"I'm not drunk," I said as carefully as I could. My tongue felt thick and slow. I probably slurred some words.

Edna hurriedly started her car and turned the AC up to max. "The heat's probably got to you. I'd better get you back to your hotel room. You should take a cool shower."

"No! Uh... sorry, but I've got to get this done. Just take me to the station. We'll get that out of the way and then I'll go to the hotel."

Edna's aura turned dark blue. She leaned closer, checking my eyes and sniffing my breath.

"Harry. No bullshit. Did you take something?"

Damn it, I didn't want to lie.

"I did, Edna. But it's not what you think. It helps me see better."

Edna's mouth described a thin, angry, line. "Show me what you took," she said.

I handed Edna the vial. She frowned and turned it over in her hands. Some oily residue oozed from one end of the vial to the other.

"What the hell is this?" she asked worriedly.

"A specially blended mixture of distilled water, cheap brandy, oak ash, hazelnut, capusin, and a half-dozen other substances. None of it's illegal and all of it can be found in a grocery store - except for the oak ash. Go ahead and give that vial to the cops and ask them to test it. I'm not worried."

Edna looked me dead in the eyes, trying to decide what to believe. For a brief moment, I saw two of her. One of them was obviously furious. The other was scared and concerned.

My head began to ache. "Edna. You know that Kolchak ran into incredible things. Things that aren't normal. Please believe me when I say it's the same for me. And that potion is actually supposed to help. I was warned that it might do something like this to me, but I didn't think it would hit me this hard."

"Potion..." Edna said slowly.

I nodded my head. "Please, Edna. It's important that we go Sykes' precinct."

She studied my face, then she nodded slowly. "We'll do the police station and I'll take you back to your hotel. But after that I'm done with you."

"Fair enough," I said shakily.

* * *

We had to stop once so I could throw up. I was shaking when I got back into the car, my head felt like somebody was using it for a bongo drum, and I was as weak as a kitten.

Edna had switched from being angry at me to being scared that I was going to die right in front of her. But she still took me to the precinct house.

After we parked, I opened the window, hoping the fresh air would help. It didn't. I was sweating so bad that I took off my duster. I was afraid that I'd pass out otherwise. Through the haze of misery, I was aware that if anyone took the opportunity to attack me, I was a dead man. Even worse, I wouldn't be able to defend Edna. Right about then I swore I would never use that damned potion again.

A thin trickle of police officers in a mix of civilian and official clothes were wandering in and out of the station. Edna gave me a running list of names and biographies as I did my best to watch the parade though through half-closed eyes. I was trying to look as if I was asleep. The last thing I needed was for all of those trained observers to decide that I was having some kind of medical emergency - or a drug overdose.

The cops had a wide range of auras. Just about any color you could think off was present. Some of them struck me as pretty ominous. Being a cop can be awfully hard job on a person.

Eventually, I saw Sykes and his wife exit the building.

Sykes has the same red and black aura as Shelley Forbes.

His pretty young wife had no aura at all.

"Take me home," I said wearily.

Edna started the car without a word.

* * *

Back at the hotel, I took the opportunity to do some more vomiting. I also had some choice words for Bob.

"I told you it would be bad," he said defensively.

"That's like saying stomach cancer is bad," I growled at him. "You're right, but the accuracy level is off by a couple orders of magnitude."

"Maybe if we'd used a better brandy..." Bob said thoughtfully.

The thought of alcohol made flee to the bathroom again.

"We'll talk later," Bob called after me.

* * *

Four hours later, I was still collapsed on my bed. It was after sundown and the only light in the room was the gleam from the eye-sockets of Bob's skull. I felt marginally better, but I was still a mess. Again, I was acutely aware that if Janos Skorzeny himself were to kick open the door, about the best I could hope for was that my blood would make him feel as bad as I felt.

"Forbes and Sykes had auras that were black with red stripes?" Bob asked thoughtfully.

"The black was kind of pale and translucent - you could just barely see through it. The red stripes seemed... well... more solid. And they had this look to them. For some reason, instead of thinking about a zebra, you thought about a tiger."

"And Sykes's wife had nothing? Nothing at all?"

"Yes."

"Harry, you're sure it was absolutely nothing?" Bob persisted. "Not even a slight haze?"

"Like I said. Nothing."

Bob fell silent for a good ten seconds. I was too washed out to badger him for an opinion.

"Crap," he said finally, "we have a problem."


	9. Chapter 9

COLD CASE - Chapter 9

"They're all infected with spirits from the Never-Never," Bob said quietly. "Spirits that are created from human dreams, fears, myths, and desires. I'm pretty sure that's also what Skorzeny was. Some wizards call them Archetypes."

I slowly sat up in my bed. "Archetypes?" I asked thoughtfully. "Archetypes of what?"

"In Skorzeny's case, the Archetype of the Vampire. Oh, I don't mean the real vampires of the various Courts. I mean the vampires of popular human myth. Myths that in this era are primarily based on the Hollywood version of Bram Stoker."

"How is that possible?" I asked.

Bob sighed. "Look, Harry, there's something like seven billion people in the world, right?"

"Right," I said as I nodded - and immediately winced in pain. Nodding was not a good idea.

"And only a few of them have magical talent, right?"

"Right," I repeated - wondering where the hell Bob was going with this.

"Wrong. All of them have magical talent, Harry. Every damn human being on the planet. It just happens to be a very minor amount of talent in most cases. So minor that Wizards and Fey and Vampires and all the rest tend to forget that it's there. But let me repeat: there are seven-freaking-billion people on this Earth and every one of them has some level of magical talent."

A chill suddenly went down my spine. "That's... something to think about," I said.

"Think harder," Bob ordered. "And feel free to get nervous. Now - how many human beings know that vampires have fangs, drink blood, sleep in coffins, can only go out at night, are incredibly strong, live forever, and are vulnerable to sunlight, garlic, and crosses?"

I thought about that. "A lot of people. But they don't all actually think vampires are real."

"Reality isn't the issue. What matters is what people imagine. And I'm willing to say that most of the seven billion people on Earth imagine that vampires - whether they exist or not - should look a lot like Janos Skorzeny. If you consider that multi-billion person belief in terms of psychic energy, where does that energy go?"

"Into the Never-Never," I said quietly.

"Where the energy forms into spirits that reflect the beliefs on which they are based," Bob continued.

"And every now and then one of those spirits come back Earth," I whispered. "And that's how we ended up with a vampire that was more like Bella Lagosi than Mavra or Ortega."

"Bingo! Mystery solved! Now, how about we check out the Pink Fox Theater? It's just two miles down the road and it got five stars from 'International Strip Club Review'."

"Hold up," I said dryly. "What about Sykes, his wife, and Forbes?"

"Archetype possession can be infectous. Didn't I say that before?"

"You did use the word 'infected'," I said after a long pause.

"Right. Try to keep up, Harry."

"Archetypes can infect people with... with... Archetypism?!"

"I don't know if 'Archetypism' is a word, but I'm willing to go along with what I think you're trying to say. Yes, close contact with an Archetype may result in another such spirit manifesting itself into the contactee. I think Sykes and Forbes were infected by contact with the patient zero of this particular outbreak. You may have heard of him. He was a fellow named Janos Skorzeny. I don't know how or when Sykes' wife turned Archetype. She might have been created off of Sykes. Or she might be a victim of Skorzeny's that was never discovered."

"They're all Skorzeny-like vampires?!"

"No. Or, at least, not all of them. Okay, I'm guessing here, but Sykes is probably an Archetype of the movie super-cop. He's Arnold on steroids, cleaning up the streets his way, avenging his dead partner, while being a pain to his by-the-book superiors. However, he's too good of a cop to fire, so he keeps his job. I'm sure you've seen that movie. Hollywood makes it five or ten times a year."

I thought that over, "You know, that doesn't sound like it's inevitably a bad thing."

"Maybe. It's possible for an Archetype to be beneficial. But what if Sykes is filling the desert around Vegas with the shallow graves of the criminals he's killed?"

"You think he's doing that?"

"I don't know, but you should consider the possibility. Archetypes have a strong predatory streak. And action-movie cops generally have a big bodycount."

"What about Forbes?" I asked.

"This is another guess, but she's probably a serial killer. All the warning signs are there and I imagine it cuts down on the food bill for her dogs. That's an Archetype that seems to be becoming more common with time."

I grimaced. "And Sykes' wife?"

"Well... the complete lack of an aura indicates she's a shape-shifter. And a powerful one. If any of those three is a Skorzeny knock-off, it's her."

"Can we help them?"

"How do you help Jeffrey Dahmer? Or Jack the Ripper? Or Pol Pot?"

"They were Archetypes?"

"Your uncle thought so. The harmless-looking cannibal next door, a woman-slaughtering knife in the dark, and a bargain basement mini-Hitler. All strong foci for modern human myths and fears. Justin said there were other signs, but he didn't explain any further. I suspect he was talking about aurae."

"But is there any way to help them?"

"As far I as I know, that's not possible."

"Are you sure about that?"

Bob paused. "Well, that's what the Council's expert on Archetypes told Justin."

I leaned forward, "Who's the expert?"

Bob paused again. "You aren't going to like this," he said slowly.

My heart sank as I suddenly realized what Bob was going to say.

"Morgan is the Council's expert on Archetypes."


	10. Chapter 10

COLD CASE - Chapter 10

After a night's sleep I felt a little felt better. I was still woozy the next morning, but at least I wasn't in such bad shape that a particularly determined and ruthless girl-scout troop could have taken me down.

The knock on my door came as a surprise. Even more of a surprise was when I heard Edna's voice call out, "Harry, it's me. Open up."

I opened the curtain to verify it was Edna. Then I tossed Bob back into his case and opened the door.

"Hi, Edna," I said as I stepped back.

Edna immediately stepped into my room - and right over the thin line of salt that I'd blended into the carpet at the inside edge of the doorframe. Hotel rooms don't have much of a threshold. They're too public. But my magically augmented salt line would react if the person entering the room was something other than human.

"Are you okay?" Edna asked gruffly.

"Yeah. That potion is now officially on the never-again list."

Edna sat down in a beat-up, but comfortable-looking easy chair. "Did you learn anything?"

I sat on the edge of my bed. "Yes, but I'm not sure how to explain it."

"Give me a try."

"Skorzeny wasn't a vampire. He was a possessed by a spirit that had him imitating the characteristics of a classic movie vampire. Something similar has happened to Shelley Forbes and Howard Sykes and his wife. They might be dangerous. Very dangerous."

Edna shook her head, "Yesterday, we saw all three of them in broad daylight."

"I don't think they're sorta-vampires. They're sorta-something-else besides vampires. I'm just not sure what."

Edna took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Damn it, Harry. I just don't know what to believe."

I nodded, "Can I ask you to do something that might help you decide?"

Her eyes got wary. "What?"

I pulled some money out of my wallet and handed it to her. "There's a drug-store just down the street. Go buy some Tylenol and a candle. The candle should be in some kind of packaging so you know it hasn't been tampered with."

After a moment of thought, Edna nodded and left the room.

* * *

It took longer than I thought it would. So long that I began to wonder if Edna had simply got into her land-barge and steamed away. But she eventually came back.

She tossed me the Tylenol and I swallowed three pills as Edna dropped my change on the nightstand. Then she held up an an ordinary white candle that was still in the shrink wrap.

"Don't give it to me," I said. "Just unwrap it and hold it in your hands."

Beginning to look impatient, Edna did as I'd said.

"Flickum Bicus," I said.

The wick of the candle flared into flame. Edna stared at it with wide eyes.

* * *

"I didn't go to the drugstore you told me to go to," Edna said. "I thought you might have set something up with the clerk. So instead I went to a grocery store a dozen blocks away. It wasn't even the closest grocery store."

"Smart," I said approvingly.

"Last night, I looked you up in an online business phone directory," Edna continued. "You were listed under 'Wizard'. You were the only one."

"Most of the other wizards keep a lower profile."

"I also tracked down Mrs. Winfield and gave her a call. She confirmed that you were working for her. And she said she hired you because you can do things nobody else can."

I nodded.

"Then I called the Chicago Police. I eventually ended up talking to a Lieutenant named Murphy. She vouched for you."

I couldn't help but laugh. "You're wasting your time as a columnist, Edna. You need to get back to reporting."

Edna sighed. "Real reporting is almost dead, Harry. And sometimes I think it died in 2006 and is buried in a grave somewhere in Los Angeles."

Then she paused and gave me a long look.

"What do we do next?" Edna asked.

* * *

The first thing I did was have breakfast. I was starving. As I ate, I told Edna what I knew about Archetypes. She didn't say anything in response, but at least she listened respectfully.

The second thing I did was more dangerous. I called White Council headquarters and asked to talk to Morgan. Unfortunately, I was out of luck. He was actually there and the Council flunky who answered the phone managed to convince him to talk to me.

"What do you want, Dresden?" Morgan growled into the phone as the connection popped and hissed. I could almost see his hand on the pommel of his sword.

"I hear that you're the expert on Archetypes. So tell me... how can you tell if someone is possessed by an Archetype?"

There was a long pause. Normally, Morgan didn't have much use for me. However, he was a man driven by a sense of duty - some might say driven crazy by a sense of duty - and if he was the Council's go-to guy on a subject he would find it hard to walk away from that. Even if it meant talking to me.

"You've found an Archetype?" he asked slowly.

"Maybe. I'm not sure," I lied. I try to be honest with the Edna's of the world. Morgan was something else.

"We will need a full report," Morgan said. I could hear suspicion oozing from his words.

"I'm not sure I have anything to report. Am I supposed to send in a potentially false alarm every time I bump into something weird? You'd be demanding my head on a pike if I did that."

"Tell me what you have."

"Years ago, something that looked like a Black Court vampire came to town," I said - being carefully unspecific about which town I was talking about. "It killed at least seven people and probably more. Four were women that he bled dry. Three were men that he killed with his bare hands. Eventually a local used a cross and a stake to kill him."

Morgan laughed humorlessly, "If an ordinary man killed a Black Court vampire, then he was either very smart or incredibly lucky."

"Yeah. And this vampire was a strange mix. Effected by holy symbols. Fangs. Blood-drinking. Avoided sunlight. Pale blood. A repulsive, but not undead appearance. He could pass for human."

"In other words, a vampire from the moving pictures," Morgan interrupted. "That does sound like an Archetype. But if the Archetype vampire is dead, why do you want to know how to identify one?"

"Because three years later another one popped up. It eventually got staked as well, but it turned out to be a woman who vanished when the first vampire was doing his thing. I think whatever the original vampire had was catching."

"Yes, that's possible. In fact, that might even make sense for an Archetype based on the ordinary mortal concept of a vampire."

"Is it common for an Archetype to generate another Archetype?" I pressed.

"No. Actually, it's rather rare, but it obviously does happen. However, I've never heard of an Archetype creating more than two other Archetypes."

Okay, that surprised me. A the moment, I had three Archetypes, two of which were directly connected to Skorzeny. And there had been another back in the '70s. I was running into something that the Council's supposed expert hadn't seen before.

"That's good news," I said, trying to keep my doubts out of my voice, "but I'm still worried that there might be more of those things around town. I need something that I can quickly and easily use in public to detect these things."

"That's a problem. Any of the common detection and analysis rituals will work, but they're neither fast nor easy to use in public. Your best bet is the Sight."

"What's the next best bet?" I asked hurriedly. The Sight is something you definitely do not use unless absolutely neccesary. It gave you a stark and perfect image of the magical truth behind the illusion of day-to-day so-called 'reality'. Some of the things you might see when using the Sight were potentially sanity-damaging. And, as a bonus, anything that you percieved with the Sight was permanently etched into your memory with complete clarity. Look at the wrong thing with the Sight and it might drive you mad. Look at a really, really wrong thing with the Sight and the phrase, "his head exploded," can become awfully close to being literal.

"Can you read aurae?" Morgan said. His tone indicated that a wizard who couldn't do that was an utter incompetent and he expected me to be one of those wizards.

"I've had a little experience," I said dryly. "But I'm not good at it."

"Then all that's left is Wizard's Touch."

I nodded slowly even though Morgan couldn't see it. Wizard's Touch is the ability of the Wizard to discern magical potential - or reality - by actually touching something. To say the least, that's also not a preferred option.

"So I suggest you shake hands with your potential vampires," Morgan said in obvious amusement. "A person accursed with an Archetype has a very distinct tactile signature. It feels like the vibration of a ringing bell."

"Okay. Next question... can you cure someone who's gone Archetypical?"

"No. When we refer to someone claimed by an Archetype as being possessed, that's actually inaccurate. You don't have an intact human soul that's being controlled by a hostile spirit. Instead, the Archetypical spirit essentially merges into the victim's soul, thus warping and changing it. Even the Council's master exorcists have never been able to do anything to help a victim of an Archetype. The curse is permanent and insidious. But..."

Morgan paused. I waited for him to continue, but he didn't.

"But?" I prodded.

He sighed. "Council policy is that Archetypes can be destroyed without question or censure. But that's not the same as saying that they should be destroyed. In my experience, not every Archetype needs to be killed."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "Morgan, are you suggesting that there's a way to handle a problem that doesn't involve decapitation? What's the world coming to?"

"Ah - there's the Harry Dresden I'm used to," Morgan snorted. "The brash and arrogant loud-mouth dancing on the edge of disaster. You must no longer need my help."

"Actually, I do. What kind of Archetype doesn't need destroying?"

"The kind that isn't hurting anyone. They do exist."

"Such as?"

"There's a woman... well, she was once a woman... All she does is wander from third-world hellhole to third-world hellhole, helping people. She's an Archetype of the wise healing woman."

"That sounds like a good thing," I said cautiously.

"I suppose. Of course, the woman in question had a life of her own before she was infected by the Archetype. She had family, friends, and plans for the future. But once she was infected, that all vanished. She simply walked away from her old life. Her husband eventually divorced her and remarried. Her son and daughter haven't seen her in twenty years. Her friends only have dim memories of her. The Archetype just doesn't have time for that sort of thing."

"But you didn't kill her."

"No, I didn't. That is my privilege as a Warden of the White Council. But that's also something that you don't have the right to decide. If you find an Archetype, Dresden, you report it to me. If you don't... well, that would be a violation of Council policy. Which would hopefully mean that the unfinished business between you and I could finally be settled."

Gulp.

"Anything else worth knowing about Archetypes?" I asked, keeping my voice steady.

"No. Well... actually there is one thing about them that's not widely known. The nature of an Archetype can apparently change with time. I once encountered an Archetype who had been a human-appearing serial rapist for several years immediately after his infection. But when I tracked him down, he had obviously changed. He had become a troll-like figure living in the sewers. He avoided all contact with human beings - especially women."

"What did you do?" I asked.

There was a long silence. The Morgan said quietly, "I didn't think I could take the chance. So I finished him."


	11. Chapter 11

COLD CASE - Chapter 11

I put the phone back down in its cradle.

"That didn't sound so good," Edna said.

"It wasn't. According to the expert, you can't save someone who's been infected by an Archetype."

The worried expression on Edna's face blossomed into just-plain fear. "Harry, you can't just..."

I held my gloved hand up, "Easy. The expert also said that some Archetypes are harmless. Before anything else, we have to figure out exactly what they are. And for that we need information."

Edna nodded her head.

"Being a wizard means there's a lot of things I can't do easily. You could be a big help, Edna."

Edna squared her shoulders and suddenly went from tiny grandmother to determined investigator. "What do you need?" she asked.

"First off, is there someone I can talk to who knows the ins and outs of the Mob back in the 1970s?"

Edna hesitated, but then she answered. "Yes. There's a retired wiseguy - Pauli Giovetti. He was a low-level mobster back in the day. Later on, he did fifteen years in prison because he wouldn't break Omerta - the code of silence - and inform on his bosses. Then when he finally got out he was pretty much kicked to the side of the road. The guys in charge of the Mob said he was too old to be of any use."

"So he's basically a disgruntled ex-employee?"

"Pretty much. He's been telling me tales of the old days for years."

"If he's talking, why is he still alive?"

"The mob in Las Vegas isn't what it used to be. The FBI put a lot of wiseguys in prison back in the '80s and pretty much broke up the nice little empire that they'd built here. Besides, by now all of the guys who had something to fear from Giovetti are long gone."

Edna made a phone call and set up a met with Giovetti. Then she and I came up with a list of things that it would be useful to know. She left my hotel room with a determined look in her eyes.

* * *

"Edna's going to be a problem," Bob said flatly. After Edna left, I'd taken him out of his travelling case.

"Maybe," I said.

"Definitely," Bob countered. "The odds that all three of those Archetypes are harmless is pretty long. She's not going to like it when you start dealing with them."

"How do you know I'm going to do anything?" I protested. "Maybe I'll just call in Morgan if there's actually a problem. It'd be nice to see the Wardens actually earn their pay for a change."

"That would be the smart thing to do, Harry. Therefore you won't do it."

"Thanks a lot, Bob."

"Hey, I'm just going with the historical record, boss. It's not in you to let things go and you have a mental block about calling in the Wardens. Look, Harry, you're pretty much done with what you were hired to do. Now you're just getting side-tracked. Which means you've decided that you need to Fix Something."

I could hear how Bob capitalized the last two words.

"Harry, for Pete's sake, let it go," Bob implored. "Call Morgan and name names. Write up your report for Mrs. Winfield and send her an invoice. Then spend a few more days here, taking in the sights and maybe getting your ashes hauled by a skilled professional. You have an expense account, abuse it like a man."

I shook my head. "The case isn't over."

Bob sighed. "Really? Allow me to summarize. Skorzeny was a creature with vampire-like powers. He killed Mrs. Winfield's sister and some other people. A local reporter named Kolchak - maybe with some help from that FBI agent Jenks - killed Skorzeny. The local big shots covered up the details because they thought it would be bad for business and maybe because they just didn't want to admit that they'd run into something supernatural. In their panic, they burned the bodies of the victims without properly releasing them to their families. Then they lied about what had happened and did everything they could to erase the details of the case from the record. Those responsible are either dead and gone, or old men mumbling to themselves in nursing homes. What's left?"

"Three things. The first is still Skorzeny. Why did he spend decades playing it cool and smart - and then suddenly go on a wild rampage once he got to Las Vegas? The second is the cover-up. Who actually ordered it? The last is the three guys in charge of the Skorzeny investigation - Butcher, Paine, and Masterson. They didn't last long before vanishing or dying. Who was behind that? Was that part of the cover-up? Or was it something else?"

* * *

Movies and television have an idea how a retired mobster lives. Usually, he's wealthy and lives in a nicely rural semi-mansion. He has a garden in which he spends his days puttering around, while keeping an eye on his extended family and dispensing sage advice to his successors in the family business. Eventually, time catches up with him and he ends up lying between the beans and the tomatoes, dead and cold.

It hadn't worked out that way for Pauli Giovetti. He lived in a decrepit apartment in a bad part of town. On the other hand, when he answered his door he was wearing an impeccably tailored suit and tie, and his shoes were flawlessly shined. He and Dr. Makurji apparently agreed on some things. I wondered if they'd ever met.

Otherwise, Giovetti was an old man; balding and carrying a few extra pounds. However, you could still see a lot of muscle in his refrigerator-like frame. His nose look like it had been on the receiving end a couple of times, and there was a scatter of tiny scars around his eyes and on his knuckles that he'd probably earned the hard way.

"You're Dresden?" he grunted at me.

I nodded.

"How's Edna?" he said as he stepped away from the door and waited for me to enter. I noticed that he didn't actually invite me in. I stepped over his threshold - it was there, but it wasn't huge. It struck me as about right for an apartment in which a lonely single man had been living for quite a few years.

"She's fine," I answered. Giovetti relaxed a little once I stepped inside, but he still seemed pretty wary. He gestured towards a worn-out easy chair that was facing an ancient television. Then he sat down primly on a battered couch. If I had to make a guess, he was being careful with his suit. It was probably the only one he had and it was reserved for when he knew guests were going to stop by.

I flopped into the easy chair and it creaked in response. Giovetti eyed my duster and staff disapprovingly. You'd be surprised how socially conservative old-school crooks can be.

"Waddaya want?" he asked.

"What did the bosses know about the Skorzeny killings back in 1970?"

The suspicious look on Giovetti's face was replaced by surprise. Then he became wary.

"They didn't like it," he said. "They were worried that the publicity would be bad for business."

"So they wanted it settled quick."

"Yeah."

"There were some strange stories about Skorzeny."

Giovetti shrugged, "He was a crazy bastard. Killing women for kicks. I'll never understand that kind of crap."

"I hear he wasn't killing for kicks. I hear he was killing for food."

Giovetti froze for a second. The tangle of expressions that wandered over his face were impressive. I think I knew why he never amounted to much more than muscle with the mob. Giovetti didn't strike me as dumb, but the way he signalled what he was thinking meant that he couldn't tell an effective lie. He probably adhered to Omerta because it was the only option available to him.

"Yeah, I heard some people say that," Giovetti said finally.

"They even said Skorzeny was a vampire," I continued.

Giovetti let out a long breath. "Heard that, too."

"Was he?"

His eyes met mine. "I don't know for sure. But I think so."

I nodded. The ice was broken. "Look. I'm hungry. I noticed a diner on the corner. Since you're doing the talking, how about I stand you for lunch?"


	12. Chapter 12

COLD CASE - Chapter 12

"How you been doing, Pauli?" the waitress - a skinny fake blonde in her fifties - said to Giovetti. Her smile was honest and open. This close to where he lived, so it made sense that Giovetti was a regular.

"Great, doll. How about my usual booth?"

"Sure!"

The diner, like Giovetti's apartment building, had probably been around since the 1940s. It was an hour after the lunch-hour rush, so it was almost empty.

After we sat down, Giovetti waited for me to order. Then he carefully ordered something that cost a dollar less than mine. Hey... a man has rules, otherwise he's not a man. That was probably the other reason Giovetti never got very far in the Mob. Organized crime is fundamentally savage and Darwinian. The Mob talks a lot about honor, codes, and family, but that's really just for the small fry. The big shots know the real score. And that boils down to win at all costs while keeping everything you can for yourself.

Coffee in chipped cups appeared in front of us. It wasn't fancy, but it was surprisingly good.

Once the waitress was gone, I continued the conversation. "Did you guys have anything to do with the Skorzeny investigation?"

Giovetti rolled his eyes, "We were running all over town, asking questions and telling people to keep their eyes open. We're the ones who tipped off the cops the night before Skorzeny was killed. That resulted in a big fight where the cops got creamed and Skorzeny got away. Two boys in blue died in that one."

"Did the bosses consider leaving the cops out of it and taking care of Skorzeny on their own?"

Gioveti shook his head. "It was important that the cops get him. If we got him, we'd have to disappear the body and nobody would know for sure that he was gone. If the cops got him, there would be plenty of headlines and everyone would know he was out of the picture. That way, the tourists would know it was okay to keep coming to town."

Then after a pause, he continued. "Considering how it worked out for the cops, I'm kinda glad we didn't try it ourselves."

I chuckled grimly. After a second, Giovetti smiled, too.

"Did you know anything about Skorzeny that the cops didn't know? That didn't come out in the papers after he was killed?"

He shook his head. "We just wanted him gone. We put pressure on the cops and the city to make that happen. Then we helped the cops from an arm's length away. After Skorzeny was killed, we helped make sure that everyone forgot about him as quick as possible."

"I've heard that people disappeared."

"Yeah, but not the way you think. There was some people we told to get out of town 'cause they knew too much and were the type who might have a problem keeping their mouths shut. Maybe we had to tell a few of them with a little more emphasis, but we didn't actually put anyone into the ground. We didn't have to. And when you get down to it, the cops did the same thing."

"Who ordered the cover-up?"

"Everybody."

Our food appeared. I was having the special - pot roast. Giovetti had a sandwhich and a salad. He exchanged more pleasantries with the waitress as she refilled our coffees.

"Everybody? What do you mean?" I asked once the waitress was gone.

"The bosses and the casino owners wanted Skorzeny gone. The mayor and the other politicians wanted Skorzeny gone - which meant the cops wanted him gone. Hell, the respectable businessmen wanted him gone. There was no Mr. Big who gave the order. It's all about the money, Dresden. Always has been and always will be."

Giovetti emphasized his last words in a way that sounded like there were some bad memories there. He stabbed a chunk of lettuce with his fork with more force than was necessary.

"You're pretty open to the idea that Skorzeny was an actual vampire," I observed. Partly because I wanted to change the subject.

"All us guys... we talked about it. The older fellows, particularly if they came from the old country, seemed willing to buy the idea. The younger, more American, guys didn't believe it. I guess I was somewhere in the middle. It seemed crazy, but it also seemed to fit what was happening."

"Did you ever actually see anything that made you think Skorzeny was the real thing?"

Giovetti smiled grimly at me. "Never met him. Thank God."

"Anything going on while Skorzeny was in town that the cops didn't know about? Something that might have involved Skorzeny?"

He made a regretful face. "We had some working girls turn up missing. Now, girls run off all the time, but this was more than usual. A lot more. Afterwards, the bosses decided that the girls just got scared of Skorzeny and bailed out of town. There was something to that, but the guy who was running our whores at the time told me that wasn't all of it. He said the timing was wrong - some of the girls vanished before anyone had figured out that we had a Skorzeny problem."

"Ever hear of a Kathryn Rawlins?"

"No. Should I?"

"A missing hooker. She turned up in Las Vegas three years later. She killed some people and ended up with a stake in her heart."

"Holy crap!"

"Yeah. What do you know about the three guys who were heading up the Skorzeny investigation? They were Butcher - the County Sheriff at the time, a guy from the DA office named Paine, and a Police Captain named Masterson."

After pausing for a moment to go down memory lane, Giovetti said, "We owned Paine. He liked boys - young ones - and we had the pictures to prove it. The bosses were mad when he got caught by the Feds, because he was pretty useful. Masterson got killed when someone broke into his house. We checked that out 'cause we wanted to make double-sure it had no connection to us, but we didn't find anything. Neither did the cops, as I recall. I don't know about Butcher. What happened to him?"

"He vanished about a year after Skorzeny died."

"Oh... yeah. I remember now. As far as I know, nobody ever figured that one out, but we got a lot of desert around here. And a desert is a great place to bury a body."

"Ever meet any of them?"

"Really different social circles, Dresden."

I couldn't help but smile at that. "Yeah. Actually, I'm not sure if what happened to them had anything to do with Skorzeny. But Butcher vanished in 1971 and Masterson died in 1972. Paine was under investigation by 1973 and in prison by 1975."

Giovetti frowned, "Real soon after the Skorzeny murders. All close together, too. That mean anything?"

"I don't know. Ever hear of a guy named Kolchak? Carl Kolchak?"

"No. Should I have?"

"A local reporter at the time."

"Oh, yeah! Now that you mention it, Eddie talked about him a few times. I think she had a thing for him back when she was a kid."

It took me a second to realize that "Eddie" was Edna.

"Kolchak killed Skorzeny."

Giovetti looked genuinely surprised. "Really? You sure? The way I heard it, the cops took care of Skorzeny."

"That was part of the cover-up. Kolchak figured out what Skorzeny was, tracked him down, and finished him off. The cops rewarded him by throwing him out of town."

Giovetti made a disgusted face. I had a feeling that story was a little too close to home for him.

"How about a girl named Gail Foster?" I continued. "She worked in a casino and I keep hearing that she was a real looker. Considering the number of pretty ladies I've seen in this town, she must have been something else."

"Never heard of her. Where does she fit in?"

"She was Kolchak's girlfriend. She vanished around the time Kolchak was told to get out of town. He tried to find her, but apparently never did. She was just gone."

Giovetti shook his head firmly, "I know what you're thinking and I'm telling you again that we didn't do anybody. I would have heard about it if we had. It's not like the movies, Dresden. People don't get whacked every day. When someone who was connected did an on-the-job killing, it was big news and we talked about it."

I was fairly sure that was the truth as Giovetti knew it. "Okay, one more name. What about Bernard Jenks? He was..."

I didn't have to finish. Giovetti's eyes were suddenly blazing. "Jenks!" he said, spitting the name out like it was a curse.

* * *

I didn't trust Giovetti not to explode into a rage if I tried to talk about Jenks in the diner, so I get kept him calm until we got back to his apartment.

"Jenks put me away," Giovetti said shakily as he pulled out a bottle of whiskey and poured a pair of shots.

"What happened?" I asked, keeping my voice low and controlled.

"Jenks was the guy who broke the outfit here in Las Vegas."

I blinked in surprise, "Uh, Pauli, I've read about how the FBI took down the Vegas mob. I don't recall Jenks' name popping up."

Giovetti smiled bitterly and slammed down his shot. "There's a reason for that. Jenks was deep in the background. He did things. He figured things out. Then he gave what he knew to the rest of the FBI. Those other guys never knew jack. They just followed Jenks' trail of bodies and took all the credit."

"You're saying Jenks killed people?" I asked slowly.

"At least four guys I know about, but more often the bodies just wished they were dead."

"What do you mean?"

Stopping in mid-pour, Giovetti put down the whiskey bottle. Then he took of his jacket and tie and unbuttoned his shirt.

I took a deep breath and then let it out slow as I fought down the urge to throw up. There was something like two-dozen fingernail-sized burn marks on the part of Giovetti's chest that I could see.

"Two days," Giovetti said raggedly. "Two days tied to a chair. Jenks didn't even ask questions for the first day. He just went through packs of cigarettes - and when he was done he'd stub it out on me. I didn't talk, Dresden. I swear on my mother's grave that I didn't talk. And that's why Jenks made sure the judge gave me a long sentence for a nothing crime. By the time I got out, I was old and the Vegas mob was a wreck, just a shadow of what it once was. The punks running what was left just laughed at me and told me to take a hike when I asked to go back to work."

"You should have talked," I said quietly. I don't know why I said that. Maybe I was just reacting to his scars.

Giovetti gave me a look that started off angry and then became just tired. "No. You're wrong. Just look at me, Dresden. I've got almost nothing. And I suppose I was always going to end up like this, because I just wasn't the right guy for what I was doing. But I do have one thing. I didn't talk. I didn't rat. I kept to the code that everyone claimed to believe in, but didn't. Jenks made me scream and he made me beg, but I didn't tell him a damn thing. And nobody can take that away from me."

* * *

It took some looking, but I found a pay-phone. There are fewer and fewer of them anymore.

"Yes?" Edna said when she answered.

"I talked to Pauli," I said.

"Did you get anything?" she asked eagerly.

"Yeah. Did you know what Jenks did to him?"

"Jenks put Pauli in jail. Pauli hates him for that."

"Anything else?"

"No. Harry, what are you talking about?"

"Are you and Pauli friends?" I asked. "Or is he just an informant?"

Edna hesitated before answering. "We've known one another for a quite a while. We're about the same age and we both come from a different era. So it isn't always business with us. We sometimes have a few drinks and talk about the old days. So, yeah, we're friends. Harry, what the heck is wrong? Is Pauli okay?"

"Maybe he needs a friend right now," I told her quietly.


	13. Chapter 13

COLD CASE - Chapter 13

"So you figure that Jenks is another Archetype?"

"Probably," I said as I scraped some powder off the bathroom sink counter and into a small jar. "Yeah, he might just be a particulary brutal cop. After all, that does happen. But it would be a hell of coincidence."

"In the FBI?" Bob continued skeptically. "For something like forty years? And now he's quietly retired and living in Topeka, Kansas?"

"You're guessing about the 'quietly retired' part," I pointed out. "For all we know, he may have some really nasty hobbies."

"But still, Harry, that's a long time for a guy who's not really human to hang around with a bunch of professional observers and not get noticed."

"That depends on how useful the rest of the FBI found Jenks. Remember, he gave everything he learned about the local Mob to his fellow agents. They used that information to destroy the Las Vegas Mob. I'll bet the agents that Jenks helped ended up on the fast track for promotion. Once the word got out that Jenks could help you break the case that would make your career, everyone might have decided not to ask too many questions about how he was getting his information."

"That makes sense," Bob conceded.

"In any case, Jenks is a problem for later on. Right now, I'd like to know how the hell Skorzeny generated so many Archetypes. We're up to four definites - Forbes, Rawlins, Sergeant Sykes, and Mrs. Sykes, and one strong maybe - Jenks."

"Actually, you've got another 'strong maybe'," Bob said. "Kolchak."

I nodded. "Yeah, I've thought of that. It would explain how he survived so many head-on collisions with the supernatural."

"So he's the Archetype of 'the reporter-who-gets-the-story-at-all-costs'?" Bob suggested thoughtfully.

"Something like that," I said. "But since he's dead, Kolchak isn't an issue."

"How did Kolchak die?" Bob asked.

"According to his obituary, a heart attack."

"You know, Harry, I've never heard of an Archetype dying of old age. Violence is what usually gets them."

And that was something else to think about.

* * *

"I've got something," Edna's voice crackled over the phone.

"What?" I asked.

"Shelley Forbes is the Vice President of something called the Las Vegas Canine Rescue Association. They take care of dogs who need a home. The organization is having a meeting tonight and Shelley is on the list of people who will be speaking."

Bingo. "How long will the meeting run?" I asked.

"From seven to ten in the evening. It's in the conference room of a hotel located just off the strip. Afterwards, there's supposed to be a mixer in the hotel bar. I've already contacted the fine folks with the LVCRA and told them I'd like to attend their meeting. They seem happy to be getting some media attention."

"Thanks, Edna. That's what I need."

* * *

The LVCRA meeting was well into it's second hour. Dracula, Nosferatu, and Orloff were all quietly sleeping off the alchemical mickey that I'd dosed them with. They'd wake up in a few hours feeling woozy, but otherwise none-the-worse for the experience.

I was carefully searching Shelley Forbes' house. I was actually hoping that I wouldn't find anything incriminating. I was hoping that whatever Shelley Forbes had turned into, it was nothing dangerous. I was hoping that I could - with a clear conscience - leave Shelley Forbes alone to live what was left of her life in peace. She hadn't asked to become a victim of Skorzeny. She hadn't asked to be changed into something not really human.

Naturally, it didn't work out.

Shelley's house had a block-lined storm cellar. Inside, it was nothing more than a storage area. It was littered with big bags of dog food, a scatter of gardening tools and supplies, an ancient refrigerator filled with ice-cold beer, and a large, but barely-used, wooden pantry. The pantry was huge - spanning most of a wall - and all it contained was some canned goods.

I almost missed it at first, but I eventually noticed that the pantry interior had less space than its exterior would suggest. After carefully noting the locations of dozens of cans, I pulled them out and stacked them on the floor in the same pattern that they had occupied in the pantry. When I returned them into the pantry, it would be a matter of simply recreating that pattern.

Once the cans were gone, I searched the back of the pantry for a false wall. A finger-sized opening contained an interior latch that I slid open. Then the back of the pantry swung loose on hidden hinges.

Inside was a neat grid of niches, each a bit more than a foot by a foot in size. Each niche contained a human skull. There was forty of them. They had been expertly stripped of all flesh and ranged in condition from old and dry to still vital.

There was a year marker neatly nailed just above each niche. The oldest read "1970" - the year Skorzeny came to town. The years then counted onward, right up to the current year, at a rate of one skull per year. The skull in the newest niche was only a few months dead.

"Damn it," I said tiredly. Then I closed the back wall of the pantry.

* * *

"I'm sorry, Harry," Bob said quietly.

The existential questions that scientists, engineers, and science-fiction writers ask themselves about artificial intelligence also apply to Bob. When I first got him, I spent some time wondering if he actually felt emotions, or if he was just simulating them in order to make it easier for people to relate to him. I guess I've never really answered the question in an intellectual sense, but in my gut I'm pretty sure that Bob can actually feel emotions.

"So am I," I said. I was laying on my bed, staring up at the ceiling. "But sorry doesn't solve the problem."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'll tip off the cops."

"It might be better to call in Morgan. He's operates under different rules than the police. He'll deal with Forbes."

I shook my head, "Yeah, but it's important that the police do this."

"Why?" Bob asked. Which, after all, was a reasonable question.

"Bob, all of those skulls were once people. They had faces, names, friends, and families. If Morgan gets the nod to handle Forbes, he'll kill her and then destroy all of the evidence. It's part of Morgan's job to keep things as quiet as possible. The cops, on the other hand, will sort it out according to police procedure. That means they'll do everything they can to learn the identities of the dead people and contact their next of kin. That way, the families will find out what happened."

* * *

Edna was at my front door the first thing next morning.

"How did it go?" she asked eagerly.

I told her everything.

When I was done, she was quiet for a long time.

"I think I know who to contact on the police force," she finally said.

"Who?"

"There's a detective named Cody. Everyone calls him "Crazy Cody" behind his back. As long as I can remember, he's been telling anyone who'll listen that there's a so-called "low intensity serial killer" in town. The killer supposedly murders one person every year or two. Cody thinks that the number is so small that it's lost in the general clutter of missing persons and unsolved homicides."

"Huh. Well, we might just be changing Cody's nickname. What's his argument for the existence of a killer?"

Edna shook her head, "I'm embarrassed to say that I'm not sure, but I can find out."

Edna pulled out her cellphone. I hastily stepped away.

"Go for it," I said. "But you might want to use the hotel phone."

* * *

It took a few minutes for Edna to find one of the crime reporters at her paper. Then we had to wait a few more minutes as her friend tracked down his file on Cody's serial killer theory.

There followed a solid ten minutes of Edna saying, "Yes," "Uh, huh," and "I see." As the reporter talked, Edna kept notes in an old-fashioned reporter's notebook - the tall, skinny, kind that's built to fit into a jacket pocket.

"What does Cody have?" I asked once Edna finally put down the phone.

Edna gave me a strange look. "Every year or so a tourist vanishes. He's always a Caucasian male - often from Central or Eastern Europe. He's also dark-haired, middle-aged, rather tall, and usually traveling alone. He always vanishes in the spring."

"Stars and stones..." I whispered.

"Every year, Forbes goes looking for Skorzeny," Edna said slowly. "And when she finds somebody who matches his description, she kills him."


	14. Chapter 14

COLD CASE - Chapter 14

I spent a restless night tossing and turning. Sometime around eight, the phone got me out of bed.

The hotel phone was hissing even more than usual. It sounded like I was holding a rattlesnake to my ear.

Mrs. Winfield was on the other end. And she was pretty upset.

"Mr. Dresden?" she shouted uncertainly. I wasn't sure if she could hear me.

"It's me!" I yelled back.

"Oh... thank God! Are you okay?"

Something cold suddenly slithered down my back. "What's wrong, Mrs. Winfield?"

"Mr. Flint is dead!"

* * *

I took a while to get what information I could from Mrs. Winfield and assure her that I would be careful. She was pretty worried. Actually, the conversation only really ended because the phone was becoming useless.

After I hung up, I brought Bob up to speed. Flint had been murdered in his office last night. Mrs. Winfield found out when the cops called her. They were checking with everyone who had recently employed Flint to see if they might know something.

"There's not exactly a shortage of suspects," Bob said once I was done.

I shook my head. "Forbes, Sergeant Sykes, and Mrs. Sykes are the obvious ones. And there's also the possibility that we have other, undiscovered Archetypes out there. Hell, it's completely possible that someone mortal has his own reasons to keep the Skorzeny case buried."

"You need more to work with," Bob suggested.

I nodded and reached for my duster and staff.

* * *

Flint's office was in a grungy, working-stiff part of Las Vegas. From the outside, his office didn't look like much - just a slot in a fifty-year-old strip mall. There was a sign next to the door that said, "Flint Investigations". It featured the classic symbol of a watchful eye. A tangle of crime-scene tape adorned the door.

I looked around. It was early-afternoon and a lot of people were in the area.

Fortunately, there was a backdoor to Flint's office in the alley behind the building. The door was pretty solid and had a lock that would have been formidable to a casual thief. I slipped it open without much difficulty and pulled loose a couple of perfunctory strips of crime-scene tape.

Flint's office was a lot like the man. Basic, blunt, and to the point. There was a desk, a couple of easy chairs, and a pair of file cabinets. The backroom had a beat-up couch, a tiny refrigerator, a small TV set, and another file cabinet.

Flint had died in the backroom. There was a taped-off outline of a body on the worn carpet.

I frowned at the outline. Edna had come through again and got a copy of the initial crime-scene report. She read me the details over the phone. According to the homicide detective who wrote the report, Flint had died from a 'massive injury to the throat'. Since additional detail was the responsibilty of the coroner, nothing else was said. However, there was no blood-stain on the carpet. Trust me on this, if you do enough damage to a man's throat that it kills him, there's blood. A lot of blood.

Okay, the implication was obvious.

I searched the office, paying particular attention to Flint's desk. I didn't find anything useful. On Flint's desk was a picture of a much younger version of him wearing a police officer's uniform. He had his arm around a woman that nobody would describe as a beauty, but whose looks were vastly improved by the happy grin on her face. Flint had a slight quirk to his lips that I think had been his equivalent of a smile.

As I left, I locked the backdoor behind me and replaced the crime-scene tape.

* * *

I waited until sundown and then went to a bar not too far from my hotel and got quietly drunk.

Well, actually, I was using a trick that Ebenezer had taught me long ago. It was a spell that broke apart alcohol molecules and left behind a harmless residue that tasted like peppermint. Since the spell called for a bit more fine control than I can normally manage, my results usually tasted more like peppermint-flavored gasoline.

Back when I was learning it, I hadn't seen the point to that particular spell. But, as usual, there was more than one thing that Ebenezer was trying to accomplish. The first was to work with improvimg my control - something poor Ebenezer spent years struggling with. The other was more subtle, but just as important. Sometimes it's handy to look like you're getting drunk when you really aren't.

Just after midnight, I got up from my seat at the bar. The bartender suggested that he could call me a cab. I gave him a wobbly smile and told him that I was staying in a hotel just down the street. He nodded his head and I stumbled out the door.

It was a ten-block walk back to my hotel. And it involved going down a lot of poorly-lit streets and past more than a few dark alleys. That wasn't a coincidence. I'd spent a few hours that afternoon scouting out the area around my hotel.

Predators often react aggressively to a prey animal that looks vulnerable. And predators love to attack from ambush. Both make for easy kills, and predators aren't in it for the sport. They kill for a living.

I was hoping to trigger the instinctive reactions of one specific predator. I wanted to make the acquaintance of Flint's murderer. It seemed likely that - now that Flint was taken care of - the killer would be interested in the other guy in town who was asking awkward questions.

As it turned out, I didn't have to wait long.

* * *

He was quiet and very fast, but I was on the lookout for a sudden rush of movement.

I twitched my wrist. I could hear my shield bracelet jingle.

The vampire slammed into my shield and bounced. You have no idea how much I enjoyed being the one who was inflicting a nasty surprise, rather than being on the receiving end. It made for a nice change in my life.

The vampire looked like a teenaged boy. Of course, there was no way to know its real age. He was wearing tattered jeans, a dirty t-shirt, and a pair of worn-out sneakers. His dark hair was wild and matted. A fanged snarl and reddish eyes dominated his face to the point that it was difficult to make out the rest of his features.

I flicked my blasting rod into my hand and held it ready as the vampire scrambled to its feet.

"We can talk or you can die," I said steadily. Which was a lie, of course. There was no way that I could let him get away. I was just hoping I could get some useful information out of him.

The vampire hissed at me. Then he began circling, waiting for me to make a panicky prey-animal mistake. He was used to that.

I merely pivoted to keep him in sight.

"You don't understand," I said with a shake of my head.

Something uncertain seemed to appear in his eyes.

"I'm the predator. You're the prey," I said quietly.

He hesitated for a long moment. Then his face hardened and he lunged for me again.

* * *

I finished the walk back to my hotel.

Behind me, the alley was in flames. Somewhere in the middle of the fire was an untidy pile of scorched bones.

* * *

I can't really use the internet - I kill computers if I get too close to them. So the next morning, I paid a librarian to print off all of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department's post-1969 missing-person flyers for teenage boys. The librarian seemed duly impressed to be working for a real-life private eye.

It turns out that Las Vegas has a depressing number of lost boys.

The vampire I'd killed the night before was named Joshua Evans. He vanished in 1973. There was no way to tell for sure, but it was reasonable to assume that he was one of Kathryn Rawlin's victims.

I spent the rest of the day checking news archives and police reports, trying to learn what I could about Joshua Evans.

* * *

"Are you planning on getting any sleep?" Bob asked gruffly.

"Later," I replied shortly.

"You didn't go to bed last night," Bob said seriously. "And you're obviously running on empty right now."

I put down the vending-machine Coke I was drinking.

"I killed a kid, Bob."

"No," he corrected, "you killed a forty year old monster who happened to be in a kid's body. And if you hadn't done it, he'd still be out there - adding to his body-count. Harry, you've got to stop beating yourself up based on something as meaningless as appearance. Concentrate on the facts."

I tiredly rubbed my face. Bob was right, of course. However, that really didn't help.

"So what did you find out about Evans?" Bob asked.

I shrugged. "Nothing solid. He vanished in '73. Ever since then, there's been a scatter of killings reportedly done by a dark-haired teenager. They usually happened in the area between Reno and Las Vegas, but there was also some crossover into California and northeast Nevada. For a while, back in the mid- to late-seventies, the Nevada State Patrol had a task-force investigating the possibility that there was a young serial killer working the highways and back-roads. Evans was actually one of their suspects. However, the task-force was shut-down when the case stopped making conventional sense."

"Okay," Bob said thoughtfully. "The state patrol decided the pattern wasn't a real pattern because the killer didn't seem to be getting any older. How many victims are we talking about?"

"Fifteen obvious ones from 1973 to 1980. Most of them were in the early years of that time-range. However, once you see the pattern, there are a lot more deaths and disappearances that are probably due to Evans. He was killing transients - mostly border-crossers from Mexico. Since they officially didn't exist, and were a long way from family and friends, there was nobody to miss them."

Bob thought that over. "So he was learning his craft from 1973 on. By 1980 he got good enough that he stopped being spotted. Harry, if you extrapolate from the number of killings done by Skorzeny..."

"Then Evans' body-count in the last forty years is huge," I said grimly.


	15. Chapter 15

COLD CASE - Chapter 15

I had to get what I'd learned about Shelley Forbes to the authorities. There were two reasons I couldn't just call the cops. The first had to do with the fact that the search I'd performed on Forbes' place had been flat-out illegal. I didn't particularly want to spend the next few days in jail while the cops sorted out the good-guys from the bad-guys. The second reason was more subtle, but was actually more important - if I was involved, then my client was involved. I didn't want that. If this had happened in Chicago, there wouldn't be a problem. Murphy and I would have a quiet conversation and then there would be an investigation. Unfortunately, I didn't have that level of trust with anyone in Las Vegas police department.

"How about this," Edna finally suggested, "I'll tell Cody that I got an anonymous phone call accusing Forbes of being a murderer and that the proof is in her basement. Believe me, if it seems to fit with what he's been working on for all these years, Cody will investigate."

It was the second morning after the night when I killed Joshua Evans. I'd finally managed to get some sleep the night before.

"Having you call the cops will involve you," I said uneasily. "And it will sound suspicious as all hell."

Edna shrugged. "Harry, things like that happen to reporters - especially if they're locally known. Two years back I got a phone call about some guys who were selling meth out of a panel truck. The guy who called me said he didn't want that happening in his neighborhood, but he had his reasons for not talking to the cops. I passed the tip on to LVMPD and that turned into a string of busts that took down a multi-state trafficking operation. The cops wanted to give me some kind of award, but I turned it down. It didn't seem right given that all I'd done was pick up the phone. And to this day, I have no idea who gave me the initial tip."

I wasn't wild about the idea, but it seemed like a reasonable solution.

I never told Edna about Joshua Evans, but Edna was pretty smart. She knew about Flint. She'd surely heard about the mysterious fire and the charred remains found in the middle of it.

I could see it in Edna's eyes - she knew. She never asked me for the details.

* * *

It felt funny to hand off the Forbes situation to someone else, but I was still on the clock. Mrs. Winfield was paying me to find answers, and while I was well on my way to the finish line, I wasn't there yet.

The problem was, the only avenues of investigation left open to me were getting more and more dangerous. For example: I was pretty sure I'd be better off questioning a grizzly bear than confronting Sykes or his wife, but that was what I was planning to do.

There was no way I was going to talk to Sykes without a lot of preparation. I spent the next day checking out Mr. and Mrs. Sykes. However, at first the public records, newspaper archives, and the usual gossip and rumors didn't seem to give me much to work with.

The Sykes' were married two years ago. That had been a shock to everyone since until then Howard Sykes had enjoyed a reputation as an inveterate bachelor and a bit of a loner. The happy couple lived in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood. They had a split-level ranch house with an eminently sensible and affordable mortgage. They didn't have any kids or pets. They only had one car - a Ford Taurus - and everyone got a huge kick out of seeing Sykes being dropped off and picked up from work by his pretty wife. Mrs. Sykes didn't mix a lot with the other policemen's wives, but when she did, it was with so much charm and warmth that any worries that she was a younger woman taking advantage of an old-fashioned and emotionally vulnerable older man were quickly dispelled.

It was worth noting that Mrs. Sykes had apparently come out of nowhere - she simply showed up one day and married Howard Sykes. She spoke English with a vaguely Midwestern accent, didn't talk about herself, and there was almost no paperwork on record about her. She seemed to have no interests outside of her marriage. Nobody knew anything about her past except for a few offhand comments she'd made about growing up somewhere in western Nebraska.

I seemed to be drawing a big blank on her.

Sometimes, a case comes together all at once. That usually happens when you stumble onto some tiny piece of information that suddenly makes everything else click into focus.

That's what happened after an underpaid public official was kind enough to exchange a photocopy of Howard and Gail Sykes' marriage license in return for a twenty dollar bill.

Mrs. Sykes had made a mistake.

* * *

That evening, I was waiting near the police station when Mrs. Sykes arrived to pick up her husband. Mrs. Sykes pulled up to the curb and parked. Then she waited patiently for her husband to appear.

I rapped gently on her window. I didn't dare make this look even slightly challenging or threatening. We were outside of a police station and Mrs. Sykes was a cop's wife.

Mrs. Sykes gave me a long look, then rolled down her window. A puff of air-conditioning came out of the window.

"I'd like to talk about Carl Kolchak and Janos Skorzeny," I said mildly as I handed her a business card. "If you have the time, I'll be in the bar of the Sands Casino at eleven o'clock tomorrow morning."

She didn't react, except to study me intently. And she didn't say anything as I walked away.

* * *

Bob and I were in a new hotel and I was under an assumed name. Before I checked in, I made sure to hide everything I could that made me stand out. Yeah, there wasn't a lot I could do about my height, but the duster and the staff had been tucked away. And I'd kept my maimed hand inside the pocket of the light windbreaker that I'd bought just for that purpose. I also used a fake ID and paid for the room with cash.

I didn't want any unexpected visits before my meeting with Mrs. Sykes tommorrow morning.

"She might not show," Bob said.

"I think she will," I replied.

"Harry... let's think about this," Bob said worriedly. "We don't know for sure what she is. All we know is that there's a good chance that she's probably, maybe, some kind of shapeshifter. For all we know, she's something horrible that could yank your head off with a twist of her wrists. And on top of that, she's a police officer's wife. All she has to do is let out a piercing scream and you're in big trouble. The kind of trouble that will follow you back to Chicago - assuming you live long enough to get back home."

I paused a long time before I replied. Bob had a point.

"I think she has a story she wants to tell," I finally said.

"You're betting your life on that," Bob replied.

"I know."

* * *

It was an hour before noon and the number of customers in the bar of the Sands Casino was about right - there were a few people present, but not too many. Mrs. Sykes and I would have some privacy for conversation, but there was enough of a crowd that hopefully her natural instincts not to draw too much attention to herself would kick in.

I was betting on two things. The first was that she wanted to talk. The other was that she wouldn't do anything to draw attention to herself. After all, she had survived for decades by not being obvious.

After grabbing a table some distance from the bar, I ordered a cup of coffee and waited. My staff was leaning against the table, my blasting rod was concealed in the sleeve of my duster, and my shield bracelet was on my wrist. I wasn't exactly looking for trouble, but I had to admit that it might come looking for me.

I didn't have to wait very long. Mrs. Sykes entered the bar just a few minutes after I sat down. She was wearing sunglasses, a modest dress that accentuated her slim body, and a pair of sandals. She spotted me immediately and walked over to my table. The eyes of every man in the bar tracked her as she moved towards me. She was definitely a beauty.

Mrs. Sykes pulled a chair back from the table and sat down. A waitress began walking towards us. Mrs. Sykes waved her off. Then she put the business card I'd left with her on the table.

"How can I help you, Mr. Dresden?" she asked. Her voice had a slight trace of a midwest twang. I couldn't see her eyes through the dark sunglasses she was wearing. That was probably deliberate. The eyes can reveal a lot.

"I'm investigating a cold case," I began. "To be more specific, I'm checking into the Janos Skorzeny murders."

She gave me a tight smile. "Mr. Dresden, those murders happened back in 1970. I wasn't even born at that time."

I carefully used my gloved hand to pull a folded piece of paper from my pocket. Then I slid it over to her.

"You made a mistake," I said neutrally. "You signed your actual name on your marriage license."

Mrs. Sykes unfolded the photocopy of her marriage license and looked at it. Then she shook her head slowly.

"Darn," she said softly. After all, she was a woman from another time. A time when women were less inclined to curse in public.

"That was careless of me," she said ruefully. "It's been so long... I didn't think anybody would make the connection. And after a while, it gets hard to keep track of all the fake names you've used. I thought it would simplify things to just use my real name."

She slid the paper back towards me and then took off her sunglasses and tiredly rubbed the bridge of her nose. When she looked back at me, her eye color flickered from brown to blue - and then back to brown.

On the paper between us, I had circled Mrs. Sykes real name in ink.

Gail Foster.

Carl Kolchak's girlfriend and fiancee. Who had disappeared in 1970, never to be seen again.

Until now.


	16. Chapter 16

COLD CASE - Chapter 16

"So now what, Mr. Dresden?" Gail asked as she leaned back in her chair. She looked comfortable and relaxed. I'm sure that was just a pose.

"Like I said - I want to talk about Carl Kolchak and Janos Skorzeny."

She made a slight gesture with one hand, as if to say, "Go on."

I took a deep breath, "It's my understanding is that Kolchak killed Skorzeny. Is that true?"

Gail nodded her head, "Yes. He put a stake through Skorzeny's heart."

"And after that, Kolchak was thrown out of Las Vegas by the authorities."

She nodded again. There was something sad in her eyes.

"What happened to you?" I continued.

She sighed and leaned forward, "Everyone thought that with Skorzeny dead, it was all over. But it wasn't. By then, Skorzeny had created one more like him."

"Kathryn Rawlins," I said.

She nodded. "Skorzeny had a process for extending his blood supply. He would run transfusions through someone he was keeping prisoner, then he would drink from them. For some reason, Skorzeny couldn't just drink the blood that he stole from hospitals and blood banks. He had to have it from a human body. Kathryn was one of his private blood donors. She managed to escape, but..."

Gail paused.

"But she had changed," I finished.

Gail nodded. "She was like Skorzeny. And she began hunting the city, just like Skorzeny. But unlike him, she was careful. But she also kept an eye on the manhunt for Skorzeny. Eventually, she noticed that Carl was onto Skorzeny - that he had a good idea what Skorzeny was and how to deal with him. After Carl killed Skorzeny, she decided that Carl was a threat that she had to deal with herself. But when she came looking for Carl, he was gone."

"But you were there," I said softly.

Gail nodded again. "She took me to a small, run-down hunting cabin and kept me there for a week - using me the way Skorzeny had used her. Having someone drink your blood is a crazy-intimate thing, Mr. Dresden. Kathryn told me about herself. About her captivity with Skorzeny. About the things Skorzeny had told her while she was his prisoner. And every time, just before she sank her teeth into me, she would say she was sorry. Every time."

Gail paused for a long second and looked at her hands. Her nails shifted from practical and short with clear nail polish, to long and bright red. Then they went back to their previous state. "One day - about a week after she took me prisoner - Kathryn simply vanished. I eventually managed to get out of that cabin. Then I went back to the city."

Then she looked me in the eye. "Of course, by then I had also changed. I wasn't exactly the same as Skorzeny or Kathryn, but I still... well, there was only one way for me to survive."

I flexed my right hand. With a flick of my arm, my blasting rod would slide out of my coat and into my hand. I didn't want a fight - at least not then and there - but I didn't know if Gail felt the same way.

"Do you know what happened to Kathryn?" I asked.

Gail looked away, seeming to eye a young couple that had just sat down at the bar and were ordering drinks. It seemed to me her gaze lingered on them just a bit too long.

"Carl eventually killed her," Gail said emotionlessly, still not looking at me.

"Any idea why she vanished for so long and then reappeared?" I asked.

She looked back at me. "As near as I can tell, she got caught outside at sunrise. That's a rookie mistake, but then again, she was a rookie. The only place she could take cover was in a road construction site. She was accidentally buried while she slept. Four years later, some repair work on the road uncovered her again."

I nodded. "What about Butcher, Paine, and Masterson? They were the guys running the Skorzeny investigation. They threw Carl out of Las Vegas. And they all came to bad ends real soon afterward."

A coldly predatory smile flickered across Gail's face, "I destroyed them."

I didn't say anything.

"Don't mourn for them, Mr. Dresden," Gail said in a brittle tone. "And don't you dare judge me. Butcher and Masterson were just as dirty as Paine, just in different ways. Butcher was getting ten percent of every drug deal made in this city. Masterson was being paid-off to allow girls to shipped back and forth across the border - those girls were essentially slaves. And all three of them were so busy digging into all of the graft that they could grab that they really couldn't be bothered to do their jobs. I am what I am now because they wouldn't listen to Carl. Other people died because they wouldn't listen to Carl."

"It didn't take much to wreck them, Mr. Dresden. I arranged for Butcher's drug-dealer buddies to find out that he was about to bust them all and use that to build a political career based on what a big-bad law-enforcement hero he was. I let Masterson's friends know that he was skimming the prettiest girls off the top of their operation and selling them to the Los Angeles Mob. Paine was the easiest to take care of - a word or two in the right ears and all of a sudden the FBI was very interested in him."

Then she ground to an angry halt, staring me in the eyes. Daring me to say the wrong thing.

"Is Kolchak still alive?" I asked.

That question rocked her. She hadn't expected it.

"He's buried in Los Angeles," she said slowly.

"Is he?" I asked.

The anger seemed to drain out of her. "After I vanished, he looked for me, but I couldn't go back to him. I did check up on him every now and then. He just kept sinking deeper and deeper into what he'd become - half-crazy and half-brilliant. He was obsessed. He killed Kathryn. He..."

She closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, she was the real Gail Foster.

She had long blonde hair, blue-gray eyes, and a pretty face that was maybe a bit too round for twenty-first century ideals of feminine beauty. As time goes by, we seem to prefer skinnier and skinnier women. But even now, she was a striking woman. If Carl Kolchak had experienced at least one bit of luck in his life, it had been Gail Foster.

"Skorzeny and Rawlins weren't shape-shifters," I observed quietly. "And none of them could go out in daylight."

Gail gave me a long look before replying. "Those were talents I developed later on. I'm not sure why or how. Maybe I just took a different path from them. Maybe they could have learned how to do this if they'd just tried."

I decided to drop that question.

"Why did Skorzeny go crazy?" I asked. "He was smart and careful for decades, but when he got here, he suddenly went out of control."

Gail just sighed, shook her head, and said, "I have no idea."

"Are you still hunting people?" I asked.

She looked away. "No. I've found a way out of that, but why should you believe what I say?"

"Look at me," I ordered.

Startled, she did just that.

I opened my third eye and gazed at her with the Sight.

* * *

Under the Sight, Gail Foster had many forms.

She was a skinny teenager, a mature adult, and an elderly crone bent by time. She was an incredible beauty, a pleasantly average woman, and a pitiful creature doomed to a lifetime of mockery and loneliness by disfigurement. She was brilliant and foolish, caring and careless, chaste and a harlot, nurturing and cruel.

As an Archetype, Gail was more than just a vampire - in fact, I could tell that she was in the process of transforming into something else. She was becoming the woman of many faces and roles who both hovered around and crept through the stark and violent world of male violence, cruelty, and desire. Her eyes had many colors and shapes. They witnessed and they judged.

But whatever else Gail might be, she wasn't evil. And while she had once been a hunter - and I could see the ghost-like figures of those she had killed looming in the background behind her - she wasn't any longer.


	17. Chapter 17

COLD CASE - Chapter 17

The next morning, I was packing my gear when there was a loud knock on my door.

"Police! Open up!" a familiar voice yelled.

Hells bells.

I didn't really have choice, so I opened the door. After, of course, I made sure I had my shield bracelet on and my blasting rod was tucked into the back of my belt.

A human wall named Howard Sykes was on the other side of the door.

"Sergeant Sykes," I said neutrally as I stepped back.

Sykes stepped inside. The simple detection ward that I'd put on the threshold told me that he was a supernatural being.

Gee, thanks.

"How can I help you, Sergeant?" I asked. "Are you here to say goodbye? Or were you just planning on looming ominously?"

Sykes took in the fact that I was in the process of packing my bags. "Leaving town?" he asked.

"That was the plan. Unless you want me to stay, of course. I live to serve the needs of the police."

He pursed his lips thoughtfully. "No. As tempting as it is to get you in an isolated cell, I actually just prefer that you were gone."

Then Sykes handed me a newspaper. On the front page was an article with Edna's byline. The police had arrested a woman named Shelley Forbes on multiple charges of murder. They had found something horrible in her basement, but so far the details were obscure. The article promised more information soon.

"Good work," Sykes said reluctantly. It was as if those two words were dragged out of him with horses and chains. I don't think Sergeant Sykes liked me. I'd say I was crushed, but that was probably what he would like to do to me anyway.

"I'm surprised you didn't handle that one. A long time ago," I said flatly as I handed the paper back to him.

Sykes gave me a look that suggested he was reconsidering the joys of applying a nightstick to the side of my head.

"You're right," he eventually admitted. "I checked on Shelley, but I didn't see anything. I thought she was clean. I should have payed more attention to what Cody was saying."

He paused, then went on. "We gave her a break. We thought Shelley had got through it without changing. And that was a mistake."

"'We' means you and Gail?" I asked.

"Yes," Sykes said with a massive shrug.

"Nobody else?"

"Nobody else."

I tossed some folded-up shirts into my travel bag and zipped it up. Bob was already packed away.

"How about Joshua Evans?" I finally asked.

Sykes shrugged. "We had our suspicions that another vampire was out there, but he didn't usually come to town. I tried tracking him a couple of times. I got a couple of his spawn, but not him."

I gave Sykes a long look. "'A couple of his spawn'," I repeated slowly. "Sykes, just how many vampires have you killed?"

He sighed. "Maybe a dozen over the years. Skorzeny was sloppy. So was Rawlins. And Evans. For a long time, I didn't think I could keep it under control."

"Hell's bells," I muttered.

Sykes chuckled, but there was no real humor in it.

"Thanks for the heads up about Forbes," I said. "Is there anything else?"

"No. I mostly just came here to throw you out of town. There's no need to take it any further if you're already on the way."

"That's pretty reasonable of you, Sykes. And, actually, I kind of appreciate it. Throwing people out of town who've just done a lot of good for it seems to be an old Las Vegas tradition. I don't think my visit would have been complete unless someone told me to be on the first train out of town."

Sykes actually smiled, "I'm glad to help. Please don't visit us again."

"How's Gail doing?" I asked.

His smile turned wintery, "Unhappy. And despite that, she's pretty sure I shouldn't do anything to you. I think she respects you, Dresden."

"I'm sorry I upset her," I said quietly.

Sykes didn't respond.

"One more thing," I added.

He raised an eyebrow.

"What's the deal with you and Gail?"

Sykes looked at me for a long, empty, second. Then he unbuttoned his shirt cuff and rolled up his sleeve. There were some bandages on his arm. He peeled them back just enough so that I could see what was underneath them.

I could see where the IV needles had penetrated his arm. And the bite marks where Gail then drank his blood.

"That's really freaking dangerous," I told him once I was able to talk again.

He just shrugged as he re-buttoned his cuff.

"I'm serious, Sykes," I said, more urgently this time.

He looked me in the eyes. "You know that I'm not like other men, Dresden. We've been doing this for years and I'm okay. We've found a way to beat what Gail's become."

"Why are you doing this, Sykes?" I heard myself ask.

He gave me a look that suggested I was an idiot. "Because she's my wife. And I love her."

"How the hell did that happen?"

A thin smile ghosted across Sykyes' face. "Haven't you heard? Nowadays, a lot of people meet the person they're going to marry on the job."

Then he left.

"'To Protect and Serve'," I quietly quoted to an empty room.

* * *

The train got delayed... of course. And then Edna excitedly called to tell me about the story. When she found out I was leaving town, she became instantly determined to see me before I left.

Edna and Pauli met me at the train station. We had a cup of coffee together as we waited for my train to finally board.

They seemed skeptical as I explained to them that Mr. and Mrs. Sykes were okay.

"Are you sure, Harry?" Edna asked worriedly. Pauli reacted to her concern by touching the back of her hand with two fingers. For a man as old-fashioned as Pauli, that was the equivalent of a full-on hug.

Well, well, well.

"I'd be grateful if you took my word for it," I said.

Edna frowned. Then she said, "Well... you're the professional wizard."

Pauli rolled his eyes, but otherwise kept silent.

* * *

It was sundown.

I was sitting in the train, trying not to snicker like a teenager as I watched Edna and Pauli walk away. There was no way Pauli would hold hands in public, but they already had that way of walking side-by-side that said, "We're a couple."

Then Carl Kolchak sat down next to me. I damn near jumped through the roof of the train.

Kolchak didn't look a day over fifty. He also didn't look dead. He was wearing a white suit and an old-fashioned porkpie hat that was cocked jauntily on his head. I don't know of anyone else existing in the 21st century who could have pulled off that look.

"Edna's a good kid," Kolchak told me. "And a good reporter."

"She's working on a big story right now," I said warily.

He smiled. "I read the morning paper. I'd say she's in the running for a Pulitzer. You don't know how proud I'll be if she wins."

"Good for her," I said slowly.

He nodded and said. "There's something I'd like you to do for me."

"Jenks?" I asked quietly.

Kolchak let out a long sigh, and then said, "I think he's a problem. But he was a friend of mine. He saved my life."

"I'll check on it," I promised.

"Thanks," he said.

"One thing..." I said.

Kolchak looked at me.

"There's something I haven't been able to figure out," I continued. "Skorzeny played it smart for a long time, but when he got to Las Vegas he seemed to go nuts. Any idea why?"

A frown appeared on Kolchak's face. Then it quickly vanished.

"I don't know for sure," he said carefully.

"But you have a theory," I suggested.

He nodded. "Yes. I think Skorzeny ate someone that didn't agree with him. And that drove him over the edge."

Huh. That made a certain kind of sense.

Then Kolchack got to his feet.

"Kolchak..." I said.

He paused and looked at me.

"You understand what's happened to you? What you've become?"

He gave me a broad grin, "Nothing happened to me that really matters. I'm still chasing stories."

"Does Gail know you're still around?"

His smile became... something else. Something filled with distant regret. "No. And I'd rather she didn't find out. She's made a life for herself and I don't want anything to happen to that. Do you understand?"

I nodded. "Okay."

Then he left.

* * *

Once I got back to Chicago, it took me a couple of days to type up my report for Mrs. Winfield. She was happy with it and even paid me a bonus.

Bob and I talked over Kolchak's theory that Skorzeny drank the wrong blood and that explained his descent into madness. There are a lot of supernatural critters out there who survive by hiding within the mass of humanity. Spend enough years hunting human beings and you will eventually encounter something unexpected - and inhuman. It struck both of us as a good theory, but we didn't have any real proof.

Edna and Pauli are my eyes and ears in Las Vegas. Among other things, they keep an eye on Mr. and Mrs. Sykes for me. So far, everything seems to be okay. I hope that continues.

Shelley Forbes is locked up in the State of Nevada's most secure psychiatric facility. She's kept completely isolated from the other prisoners and I hear that the guards gather into a pack whenever the door to her cell is opened.

The situation with Bernie Jenks wasn't as bad as we'd feared - it was worse. I dealt with it, but that's a story for another day.

I never saw Kolchak again. However, I'm pretty sure he's still out there.

Still hunting down the stories that will never be published.

Still stalking the night.

* * *

_**Dedicated to the memory of Darren McGavin (1922 - 2006) and Simon Oakland (1915 - 1983) who brought the characters of Carl Kolchak and Tony Vincenzo to life. Rest in peace.**_


End file.
